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John Neal, in the years following American independence, was a strong and often irritating spokesman for literary nationalism and for the new romantic doctrines of Germany and England that were breaking the mold of eighteenth-century literary theory. Neal and his twin sister, Rachel, grew up in the seaport town of Falmouth, Maine (now Portland). Their father, John Neal, Sr., had died when they were a month old. Their mother became a teacher after her husband's death. From the age of twelve, Neal educated himself by his own omnivorous reading. His young brain was fired with the Gothicism of Ann Radcliffe and Charles Brockden Brown, as well as by William Godwin, whose feminism Neal quickly espoused. After early attempts at launching himself with merchants in Falmouth and a brief period as an itinerant portraitist, he entered mercantile business in Boston (1809-1814) with John Pierpont. In 1815 they opened a second establishment in Baltimore and moved there.
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