Many of the tales collected here are allegories, and, typical of Hawthorne, focus on the negative side of human nature. Once again, you will find many Hawthorne short story masterpieces (“The Birthmark,” “Young Goodman Brown,” “Rappaccini’s Daughter,” “The Artist of the Beautiful”), but many of the lesser-known pieces will certainly reward your attention.
This collection, published in 1846, revised in 1854, consists almost entirely of previously published short stories, and was named in honor of The Old Manse where Hawthorne and his wife lived for the first three years of their marriage.
Generally, most contemporary critics praised the collection and considered it better than Hawthorne’s earlier collection, Twice-Told Tales. Herman Melville deemed Hawthorne to be the American Shakespeare, and Henry James wrote that his early tales possess “the element of simple genius, the quality of imagination. That is the real charm of Hawthorne’s writing — this purity and spontaneity and naturalness of fancy.”
The appendix presents the review “Hawthorne and His Mosses” by Herman Melville, one of the most probing commentaries on Hawthorne ever written.
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Nathaniel Hawthorne (né Hathorne; July 4, 1804 – May 19, 1864) was an American novelist, biographer, and short story writer. He is seen as a key figure in the development of American literature for his tales of the nation's colonial history. His fiction works are considered part of the Romantic movement and, more specifically, dark romanticism. Many of his works feature moral metaphors with an anti-Puritan inspiration, centering on the inherent evil and sin of humanity.
Hawthorne’s best-known works include
The Scarlet Letter and
The House of the Seven Gables.
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The contents of this book were first published 1832 ~ 1852. This book is in the public domain world-wide because the author died more than 100 years ago, and it was published prior to 1927.
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