Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Contemporary Reviews

The collected contemporary reviews of Hawthorne; assembled, edited and introduced for the serious scholar.

John L. Idol, Jr (Edited by), Buford Jones (Edited by), M. Thomas Inge (Preface by)

9780521391429, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 29 July 1994

564 pages
24.4 x 16 x 3.9 cm, 0.937 kg

"...provides a valuable resource of primary material on a writer who once styled himself the 'obscurest man in American letters.'" Val Gough, Journal of American Studies

From the self-withdrawn Fanshawe through the posthumously issued Dr Grimshaw's Secret, this compilation of reviews and notices traces Nathaniel Hawthorne's rise from obscurity to world renown as a writer placed in the ranks of Carlyle, Dickens and Shakespeare. Reviews by Henry Fothergill Chorley, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Edgar Allan Poe, Herman Melville, Margaret Fuller, Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, Edwin Whipple, Henry James, Edith Simcox, William Dean Howells and many others respond to Hawthorne's tales, romances, notebooks, and fragmentary works in efforts to capture and define the nature of Hawthorne's mind and the quality of his art. The introduction explores the thematic concerns taken up by reviewers, focusing on the elements of Hawthorne's life and art of most interest to his contemporary readers. Several retrospective reviews, one appearing as early as the 1840s, provide thoughtful estimates of Hawthorne's achievement.

Series editor's preface
Acknowledgements
Introduction
A note on the selections
1. Fanshawe (1828)
2.Tales and sketches in The Token and other annual or periodical publications, 1831–1837
3. Twice-Told Tales (1837–1838)
4. The Gentle Boy (1839)
5. Grandfather's Chair, Famous Old People, and Liberty Tree (1841)
6. Biographical Stories for Children (1842)
7. Twice-Told Tales (second edition, 1842)
8. Mosses from an Old Manse (1846)
9. The Scarlet Letter (1850)
10. True Stories from History and Biography (1850)
11. The House of Seven Gables (1851)
12. Twice-told Tales (reissue, 1851)
13.Wonder Book for Girls and Boys (1851)
14. The Snow Image and Other Twice-Told Tales (1851)
15. The Blithedale Romance (1852)
16. Life of Franklin Pierce (1852)
17. Tanglewood Tales (1853)
18. Mosses from an Old Manse (reissue, 1854)
19. The Marble Faun (Transformation in England) (1860)
20. Our Old Home (1863)
21. Pansie (1864)
22. Passages from the American Note-Books of Nathaniel Hawthorne (1868)
23. Passages from the American Note-Books of Nathaniel Hawthorne (1870)
24. Passages from the French and Italian Note-Books of Nathaniel Hawthorne (1871)
25. Septimius Felton
or, The Elixir of Life (1872)
26. Fanshawe and The Dolliver Romance (1876)
27. Dr. Grimshaw's Secret (1882)
Retrospective and general-assessment essays, 1841–1879
Index.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: general [DSB]