The Algerine Captive: The Life and Adventures of Doctor Updike Underhill: Six Years a Prisoner Among the Algerines (Cosimo Classics Literature)

He wrote the first American comedy to be performed onstage and here in this extraordinary but sadly little-remembered 1797 novel he anticipates the great literature of the coming American century. Here in two volumes in one book Royall Tyler tells the astonishing-and thoroughly fictional-tale of Boston gentleman and scholar Updike Underhill whose life encompasses such extremes as fumblings with Greek poetry that almost lead him to a deadly duel and a stint as a surgeon on a slave ship. One of the first works of fiction to feel uniquely American this combination of satire and sincerity begins in Volume 1 as a comedy of manners and genteel adventure the likes of which Mark Twain would later make his own and transforms in Volume 2 into a sober tale of abolition and a striking consideration of what it meant in those early days of the nation to be an American. Fans of American literature should consider this a must-read. American playwright ROYALL TYLER (1757-1826) born William Clark Tyler wrote many other plays some of which have been lost as well as novels essays and humorous verse.