Brother Jonathan: or, the New Englanders is an 1825 historical novel by American writer John Neal. The title refers to Brother Jonathan, a popular personification of New England and the broader United States. The story follows protagonist Walter Harwood as he and the nation around him both come of age through the American Revolution. The novel explores cross-cultural relationships and highlights cultural diversity within the Thirteen Colonies, stressing egalitarianism and challenging the conception of a unified American nation. It features mixed-race Anglo-Indigenous characters and depicts them as the inheritors of North America. The book's sexual themes drew negative reactions from contemporary critics. These themes were explicit for the period, addressing female sexual virtue and male guilt for sexual misdeeds.
Literature scholars have praised Brother Jonathans extensive and early use of realism in depicting American culture and speech. Using phonetic transcriptions, the dialogue documents a wide range of regional accents and colloquialisms. Included in the dialogue is a likely-accurate depiction of American Indian English, and what may be American literature's earliest attempt to express a wide range of emotions using children's natural speech patterns. Neal's characterizations of American character and speech were praised in the UK but derided in the US. The author nevertheless considered them central to developing an American literature distinct from British precedent.
Neal wrote the original manuscript while crossing the Atlantic from Baltimore in early 1824, then revised it in London many times before convincing William Blackwood of Edinburgh to publish it in mid-1825. It is Neal's longest work and possibly the longest single work of American fiction until well into the twentieth century. The editing process was the most laborious of Neal's career and resulted in a number of inconsistencies in the plot. The author fashioned many of the deleted sections into separate works he published later. Considered one of America's top novelists at the time, Neal wrote Brother Jonathan with a British audience in mind in order to boost his reputation internationally. It was a financial failure that received mixed but mostly warm reviews at the time. Twenty-first century readers are generally unaware of the book, and many scholars consider it too complex to be considered good. As of 2024, it has never been published in the US.
Plot
The storyline begins in 1774 in the Connecticut home of Presbyterian preacher Abraham Harwood. Abraham lives in the fictional community of Gingertown with his son Walter Harwood, his Virginian niece Edith Cummin, and a mysterious figure named Jonathan Peters. The introductory chapters illustrate the individual nature of the characters within the specific cultural context of New England. Walter loves Edith and feels jealous of her relationship with Jonathan. Abraham becomes implicated in a murder that occurred near Abraham's church, but the community turns its attention to Jonathan and drives him out of Gingertown.
Walter becomes restless in his rural surroundings, but his father will not let him leave for New York City. Walter grew up spending time in the forest among Indigenous people, particularly his friend Bald Eagle. When Walter gets caught in a spring flood, Bald Eagle saves him and brings him home. Edith and Walter express love for each other and become engaged.
With his father's consent, Walter takes a stage coach to New York following a send-off from community members exhibiting New England customs. He gets a job in a counting house and moves into a Quaker household, where he learns that his father has been killed and his family home seized by Loyalists.
Walter meets a young man named Harry Flemming who has news concerning Edith. He reports that she is living among high society in Philadelphia and has asked for news of Jonathan. This inquiry reignites Walter's jealousy. Walter ends the engagement and develops relationships with two other women: Mrs. P. and Olive Montgomery. Olive knows Edith from childhood and met Jonathan through Harry.
Walter and Harry get very drunk while observing riotous behavior during Declaration of Independence celebrations. Harry leads Walter to the luxurious home of a courtesan named Emily. She seduces Walter and they sleep together, though he is troubled by thoughts of Edith.
Walter finds a note written by Abraham explaining that Walter's father is not Abraham but, rather, a man named Warwick Savage, whom Abraham murdered upon discovering Warwick's sexual affair with his wife. The note also explains how Jonathan was implicated by his appearance near the murder scene. It also describes the strange likeness between Jonathan and Warwick.
Walter joins the Continental Army and serves under Captain Nathan Hale and Colonel Warwick Savage. Walter is bothered by the colonel's resemblance to Jonathan, then learns from Indigenous friends and from a letter from Edith that Warwick is actually Jonathan using a false identity. Walter learns that Jonathan has sinister reasons for joining the army. Jonathan tries to kill Walter during the Battle of Long Island and Walter wounds him in self defense.
Walter is severely wounded during the Battle of Harlem Heights and he returns to his Quaker hosts. He is nursed by the daughter in the household, Ruth Ashley, who has held unrequited romantic feelings for him since he arrived in New York a year earlier. Meanwhile, Walter is haunted by the dreams of Jonathan Peters. Walter recovers and hears that Olive is dying, so he ventures to visit her in an Indigenous settlement outside the city. Along the way, he witnesses Nathan Hale's execution and is nearly executed himself. Bald Eagle liberates Walter from enchantment by an Indigenous witch named Hannah, which had been causing his dreams of Jonathan and related suicidal thoughts. Upon meeting with Olive, Walter learns that her love for him is causing her death. She makes a contradictory statement regarding whether Walter should marry Edith, then dies.
Edith tells Walter that the real Warwick had a brother who is using Warwick's name to escape punishment for committing crimes. It becomes unclear whether Abraham's murder victim was Warwick or the brother. Walter visits Edith where she is staying with Benedict Arnold. He witnesses her in a possibly romantic exchange with Jonathan and leaves without seeking an explanation from either. He rushes to Emily's home, seduces her, sleeps with her, and proposes marriage. Opposed to the institution of marriage, Emily refuses, but offers him advice. Walter sees her as a more upstanding character than before.
Walter learns that Jonathan and Benedict Arnold are collaborating as traitors. Harry pursues them and wounds Jonathan. Emily gives birth to Walter's child. Walter considers marrying Emily until the child dies. Emily advises Walter to return to Edith and he leaves Emily with a letter to deliver to Edith if he should die.
Edith tells Walter more about Warwick and his brother. She tells him to attend a meeting of Indigenous Penobscot leaders to learn more. Walter travels to the Massachusetts District of Maine and sees the results of the Burning of Falmouth. At Indian Island he learns of his distant Penobscot and Mohawk ancestry and meets up with Edith. He finds Warwick/Jonathan, whose real name is Robert Evans. Robert is his real father but thought Walter was Abraham's son and that Walter was responsible for the accidental infant death of Robert's other son. Robert's twin brother George Evans was the man murdered by Abraham. Harry is Walter's cousin, the illegitimate son of Abraham's sister and George. The novel closes: "Walter and Edith were happy: and Warwick Savage – alias, Jonathan Peters – alias, Robert Evans – he, though not happy, was no longer bad, or foolish."
Background At more than 1,300 pages across three volumes, Brother Jonathan is John Neal's longest book. Writing in 1958, scholar Lillie Deming Loshe considered it the longest work of early American fiction and possibly longer than any other since. There were no other works of American fiction comparable in scope, length, and complexity until the Littlepage Manuscripts trilogy (1845–1846) by James Fenimore Cooper. Neal published it anonymously, but revealed himself as the author through coded references in his 1830 novel, Authorship.
In Baltimore in 1818, Neal collaborated with fellow Delphian Club cofounder Tobias Watkins to write A History of the American Revolution (published 1819) based on primary sources collected by another Delphian, Paul Allen. In late November 1823, he was at a dinner party with an English friend who quoted Sydney Smith's then-notorious 1820 remark, "in the four quarters of the globe, who reads an American book?". On December 15, 1823, he left Baltimore on a UK-bound ship. Partly in response to Smith, and drawing on that Revolutionary War research, Neal wrote the first draft of Brother Jonathan while sailing across the Atlantic. The working title was The Yankee, and he intended it to be a major work that would expand his recognition as a significant novelist beyond the US and into the UK. Seventy-Six (1823) had gained him recognition as Cooper's chief rival as America's top novelist. He hoped this new novel would boost his reputation to surpass Cooper's.
Unlike his previous novels, Neal wrote Brother Jonathan with a British audience in mind. His intention was to make the US, its language, and its customs more broadly recognized in the UK. Soon after arriving in London in February 1824, he brought his manuscript to publishers in that city, but failed to convince any of them to publish it. He approached the publishing company that pirated Seventy-Six and Logan, offering them his other Baltimore-published novels Errata and Randolph, but they refused to publish either. His financial situation was becoming desperate when, in April, William Blackwood of Edinburgh asked Neal to become a regular contributor to Blackwood's Magazine. For the next year and a half, Neal was one of the magazine's most prolific contributors.
While working on the American Writers series and other articles for Blackwood's, Neal rewrote Brother Jonathan with Blackwood in mind as a potential publisher. He sent the manuscript to Edinburgh in October 1824. Blackwood refused to publish, partly on account of the novel's sexual content, saying: "it is not fit for young people to read of seduction, brothels, and the abandonment of the sexes." Based on feedback from both Blackwood and his associate David Macbeth Moir, Neal revised the novel and submitted a second draft in March 1825. Blackwood agreed to publish, but requested one more round of revisions, to which Neal agreed. This process of revision was more laborious than for any other novel Neal published and scholars blame it for many of the plot's inconsistencies. Neal later used sections cut during those revision processes to create other works, including the essay "The Character of the Real Yankees" (The New Monthly Magazine 1826), the fiction series "Sketches from Life" (The Yankee 1828–1829), the fictional fragment "Males and Females" (The Yankee April 9, 1829), the short story "Otter-Bag, the Oneida Chief" (The Token 1829), and the novella Ruth Elder (Brother Jonathan magazine 1843).