Other Fiction Hawthorne, Nathaniel: Doctor Grimshawe's Secret. v1. 15 Dec 2014

[crutledge]

Nathaniel Hawthorne: (1804 - 1864) Father of Julian Hawthorne

Nathaniel Hawthorne was born in Salem, Massachusetts, where he wrote the bulk of his masterful tales of American colonial history. His career as a novelist began with The Scarlet Letter (1850) and also includes The house of the Seven Gables, The Blithedale Romance, and The Marble Faun

Excerpt
A preface generally begins with a truism; and I may set out with the admission that it is not always expedient to bring to light the posthumous work of great writers. A man generally contrives to publish, during his lifetime, quite as much as the public has time or inclination to read; and his surviving friends are apt to show more zeal than discretion in dragging forth from his closed desk such undeveloped offspring of his mind as he himself had left to silence. Literature has never been redundant with authors who sincerely undervalue their own productions; and the sagacious critics who maintain that what of his own an author condemns must be doubly damnable, are, to say the least of it, as often likely to be right as wrong.

NOTE: The last 4 Notes in the Appendix [78-81] are not referenced anywhere in the main text.

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