Publisher's Synopsis
The Piling of Tophet is the autobiography of John T. Fowler. John Fowler was born in Flushing, Long Island, New York in 1843. After developing delusions and hallucinations of hearing at the age of twenty-nine, he was committed to the Hudson River State Hospital in Poughkeepsie, New York, where he lived for seven years. One year before leaving the asylum, he wrote his life story. His book is an introspective, contrarian, and deeply philosophical coming-of-age story, and a rare first-hand account of the experience of madness in nineteenth-century America.
