_Mrs. Sally Keating Wood_ (1760-1855), wife of General Abiel Wood, of Maine, may be mentioned as the author of “Julia and the Illuminated Baron” (1800), which recalls the mysterious evil power and atheistic tendencies attributed to the Bavarian order of the Illuminati, established in 1775, which, though suppressed in 1780 by the Elector, was supposed to have secretly persisted and spread over Europe. Mrs. Wood wrote also “Dorval, or The Speculator” (1801), “Amelia, or The Influence of Virtue” (1802), “Ferdinand and Elmira, a Russian Story” (1804), and “Tales of the Night” (1827), besides several novels that were never published. Mrs. Wood placed many of her scenes in Europe. _Isaac Mitchell._--At Poughkeepsie, New York, in 1811, was published in two volumes “The Asylum, or Alonzo and Melissa, an American Tale, Founded on Fact.” Of the author of this Gothic romance, Isaac Mitchell,[5] little is known save that he was successively the editor of _The Farmer’s Journal_, _The Political Barometer_, and _The Republican Crisis_, all of Albany, New York, and that after losing his position through political changes, he moved to Poughkeepsie. The story was later abridged and compressed into one volume by Daniel Jackson, Jr. (Mitchell’s name disappearing from the title-page), and in this form was long popular throughout America; Mr. Reed thinks that for nearly a quarter of a century a new edition appeared practically every year. The narrative is full of elaborate descriptions of nature.