The Portable Hawthorne

The Portable Hawthorne includes writings from each major stage in the career of Nathaniel Hawthorne- a number of his most intriguing early tales, all of The Scarlet Letter, excerpts from his three subsequently published romances-The House of Seven Gables, The Blithedale Romance, and The Marble Faun-as well as passages from his European journals and a sampling of his last, unfinished works. The editor's introduction and head notes trace the evolution of Hawthorne's writing over the course of his long career- from the tales, to their apotheosis in The Scarlet Letter, through his popular romances, to his private journals and frustrated attempts at another romance. Readers looking for a critical vantage point from which to see Hawthorne whole-his artistic rise, triumph, and sad decline-can find it in this collection.

Table of Contents:
The Portable HawthorneIntroduction Chronology I. The Tales (1830-1852) Editor's Note My Kinsman, Mayor Molineux Roger Malvin's Burial Young Goodman Brown The Minister's Black Veil The Man of Adamant The Birth-Mark Rappaccini's Daughter Prefaces from "The Old Manse" to Twice-told Tales to The Snow-Image II. The Scarlet Letter (1850) Editor's Note III. The Published Romances (1851-1860) Editor's Note from The House of the Seven Gables from The Blithedale Romance from The Marble Faun IV. The European Journals (1853-1860) Editor's Note from the English, French, and Italian Journals V. The Last Years (1861-1864) Editor's Note Passages from the letters and the Unfinished Romances Suggestions for Further Reading

About the Author :
Nathaniel Hawthorne was born on July 4, 1804, in Salem, Massachusetts, the son and grandson of proud New England seafarers. He lived in genteel poverty with his widowed mother and two young sisters in a house filled with Puritan ideals and family pride in a prosperous past. His boyhood was, in most respects, pleasant and normal. In 1825 he was graduated from Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Maine, and he returned to Salem determined to become a writer of short stories. For the next twelve years he was plagued with unhappiness and self-doubts as he struggled to master his craft. He finally secured some small measure of success with the publication of his Twice-Told Tales (1837). His marriage to Sophia Peabody in 1842 was a happy one. The Scarlet Letter (1850), which brought him immediate recognition, was followed by The House of the Seven Gables (1851). After serving four years as the American Consul in Liverpool, England, he traveled in Italy; he returned home to Massachusetts in 1860. Depressed, weary of writing, and failing in health, he died on May 19, 1864, at Plymouth, New Hampshire. William C. Spengemann is the Hale Professor in Arts and Sciences and Professor of English Emeritus at Dartmouth College. He edited the Penguin Classics edition of Nineteenth-Century American Poetry.