Nathaniel Hawthorne

An old mansion in Salem, moss-covered and gabled, broods over the destiny of a distinguished but troubled New England family -- the Pynchons. A haunting centuries-old curse, a forceful probing of national and personal guilt, a romance between the young heroine and an attractive stranger -- all intertwine in this work that Henry James declared "the closest approach we are likely to have to the Great American Novel." "The story moves in soft September light, melting like a happy dream of Shakespeare." --Van Wyck Brooks

A collection of short fiction from a writer who helped to shape the course of American literature, Nathaniel Hawthorne's "Selected Tales and Sketches" is introduced by Michael J. Colacurcio in "Penguin Classics". With a determined commitment to the history of his native land, Nathaniel Hawthorne revealed, more incisively than any writer of his generation, the nature of a distinctly American consciousness. But Hawthorne was highly - often wickedly - unorthodox in his account of life in early America, and his precisely constructed plots quickly engage the reader's imagination. Collected here are stories such as "Young Goodman Brown", in which a young Puritan man is haunted by a vision of satanic rituals, gradually losing his faith; "The Haunted Mind", which contemplates the surreal nature of dreams as a gateway to supernatural realms; "Ethan Brand", an eerie meditation on the nature of sin; and "The Minister's Black Veil", in which a small-town clergyman undergoes a frightening transformation. Written from the 1820s-to the 1850s, these works are informed by themes that reappear in Hawthorne's longer works: "The Scarlet Letter", "The House of the Seven Gables" and "The Blithedale Romance". And, as Michael J. Colacurcio points out in his introduction, they are themes that are now deeply embedded in the American literary tradition. Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-64) was born in Salem, Massachusetts. In 1825 he graduated from Bowdoin College, Maine, and returned to Salem determined to become a writer. He joined Brook Farm, a utopian experiment in communal living, before marrying in 1842. His writing had already secured some success with his "Twice-Told Tales", but it was the publication of "The Scarlet Letter in 1850" that brought him immediate recognition, followed a year later by "The House of the Seven Gables". If you enjoyed "Selected Tales" and "Sketches", you might like Edgar Allen Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher and Other Writings", also available in "Penguin Classics".

A superb depiction of a utopian community that cannot survive the individual passions of its members. In language that is suggestive and often erotic, Nathaniel Hawthorne tells a tale of failed possibilities and multiple personal betrayals as he explores the contrasts between what his characters espouse and what they actually experience in an 'ideal' community. A theme of unrealized sexual possibilities serves as a counterpoint to the other failures at Blithedale: class and sex distinctions are not eradicated, and communal work on the farm proves personally unrewarding and economically disastrous. Based in part on Hawthorne's own experiences at Brook Farm, an experimental socialist community, The Blithedale Romance is especially timely in light of renewed interest in self-sufficient and other cooperative societies.

This enduring novel of crime and retribution vividly reflects the social and moral values of New England in the 1840s. Nathaniel Hawthorne's gripping psychological drama concerns the Pyncheon family, a dynasty founded on pious theft, who live for generations under a dead man's curse until their house is finally exorcised by love. Hawthorne, by birth and education, was instilled with the Puritan belief in America's limitless promise. Yet - in part because of blemishes on his own family history - he also saw the darker side of the young nation. Like his twentieth-century heirs William Faulkner and F. Scott Fitzgerald, Hawthorne peered behind propriety's façade and exposed the true human condition.

Hailed by Henry James as "the finest piece of imaginative writing yet put forth in the country," Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter reaches to our nation's historical and moral roots for the material of great tragedy. Set in an early New England colony, the novel shows the terrible impact a single, passionate act has on the lives of three members of the community: the defiant Hester Prynne; the fiery, tortured Reverend Dimmesdale; and the obsessed, vengeful Chillingworth. With The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne became the first American novelist to forge from our Puritan heritage a universal classic, a masterful exploration of humanity's unending struggle with sin, guilt and pride.

Nathaniel Hawthorne (July 4, 1804 - May 19, 1864) was an American novelist, dark romantic, and short story writer. His works often focus on history, morality, and religion. He graduated from Bowdoin College in Maine, where the poet Longfellow was also a student, and spent several years travelling in New England and writing short stories before his best-known novel The Scarlet Letter was published in 1850. His writing was not at first financially rewarding and he worked as measurer and surveyor in the Boston and Salem Custom Houses. In 1853 he was sent to Liverpool as American consul and then lived in Italy before returning to the US in 1860.

This small volume and others of a similar character, from the same hand, have not been composed without a deep sense of responsibility. The author regards children as sacred, and would not, for the world, cast anything into the fountain of a young heart that might imbitter and pollute its waters. And, even in point of the reputation to be aimed at, juvenile literature is as well worth cultivating as any other. The writer, if he succeed in pleasing his little readers, may hope to beremembered by them till their own old age, --a far longer period of literary existence than is generally attained by those who seek immortality from the judgments of full-grown men.