![]() ![]() He incorporates tactics of early writers from both sides of the Atlantic, including American writers such as Charles Brockden Brown and Washington Irving, and foreshadows the developing American gothic styles of Edgar Allan Poe and Herman Melville in Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym and Benito Cereno. Recent agitation in England for parliamentary reform and abolition of slavery contributed to the atmosphere of dread. With this potent and diverse set of tools, Howison addresses slave violence, human cruelty, and the role of reason, law, and chivalry in a society. Howison’s work can be seen to denote what critic Gretchen Woertendyke calls a “new gothic nationalism.” The author uses not just the tools of the British “terror,” such as psychological realism and fantastic accounts of mortal danger, but also romantic sentimentality, to detail horror and hope on the horizon. His portrayal of a black captain, through the eyes of a European surgeon, speaks to anxieties about slavery at the time. Howison incorporates some aspects from the traditional Gothic, slave narratives, as well as romance tales, creating popular appeal for audiences on both sides of the Atlantic. The story was immediately popular and reprinted widely. Howison tells the story of a black pirate captain, who is ruthless yet human who struggles to overcome the violent oppression associated with his past enslavement and who emerges as European powers and the United States come to terms with pressing political questions. ![]() This historically significant and, at the time, socially relevant, piece of fiction was written by one of the magazine’s most notable and prolific authors of “tales of terror,” John Howison (1797-1859). “The Florida Pirate” was first published in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine in 1821.
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