Library of the best American literature: Containing the lives of our authors in story form, their portraits, their homes, and their personal traits, how they worked and what they wrote; choice selections from eminent writers, embracing great American poets and novelists, foremost women in American letters, distinguished critics and essayists, our national humorists, noted journalists and magazine contributors, popular writers for young people, great orators and public lecturers
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Library of the best American literature: Containing the lives of our authors in story form, their portraits, their homes, and their personal traits, how they worked and what they wrote; choice selections from eminent writers, embracing great American poets and novelists, foremost women in American letters, distinguished critics and essayists, our national humorists, noted journalists and magazine contributors, popular writers for young people, great orators and public lecturers
American literature
Enumerated briefly, the books written by Hawthorne in the order
of their publication are as follows: “Fanshawe,” a novel (1826),
suppressed by the author; “Twice-Told Tales” (1837), a collection of
magazine stories; “Twice-Told Tales” (second volume, 1845) “Mosses
from an Old Manse” (1846), written while he lived at the “Old Manse”;
“The Scarlet Letter” (1850), his greatest book; “The House of Seven
Gables” (1851), written while he lived at Lenox, Massachusetts; “The
Wonder Book” (1851), a volume of classic stories for children; “The
Blythedale Romance” (1852); “Life of Franklin Pierce” (1852), which
was written to assist his friend Pierce, who was running for President
of the United States; “Tanglewood Tales” (1853), another work for
children, continuing the classic legends of his “Wonder Book,”
reciting the adventures of those who went forth to seek the “Golden
Fleece,” to explore the labyrinth of the “Minotaur” and sow the
“Dragon’s Teeth.” Pierce was elected President in 1853 and rewarded
Hawthorne by appointing him Consul to Liverpool. This position he
filled for four years and afterwards spent three years in traveling on
the Continent, during which time he gathered material for the greatest
of his books――next to “The Scarlet Letter”――entitled “The Marble
Faun,” which was brought out in England in 1860, and the same year
Mr. Hawthorne returned to America and spent the remainder of his life
at “The Wayside” in Concord. During his residence here he wrote for
the “Atlantic Monthly” the papers which were collected and published
in 1863 under the title of “Our Old Home.” After Mr. Hawthorne’s
death, his unpublished manuscripts, “The Dolliver Romance,” “Septimius
Felton” and “Dr. Grimshawe’s Secret,” were published. Mrs. Hawthorne,
also, edited and published her husband’s “American and English
Note-Books” and his “French and Italian Note-Books” in 1869. The
best life of the author is perhaps that written by his son, Julian
Hawthorne, which appeared in 1885, entitled “Nathaniel Hawthorne and
His Wife; a Biography.”
A new and complete edition of Hawthorne’s works has been lately issued
in twenty volumes; also a compact and illustrated library edition in
seven volumes.
Nathaniel Hawthorne died May 18, 1864, while traveling with his friend
and college-mate, Ex-President Pierce, in the White Mountains, and was
buried near where Emerson and Thoreau were later placed in Concord
Cemetery. Emerson, Longfellow, Lowell and Whittier were at the funeral.
His publisher, Mr. Field, was also there and wrote: “We carried him
through the blossoming orchards of Concord and laid him down in a
group of pines on the hillside, the unfinished romance which had
cost him such anxiety laid upon his coffin.” Mr. Longfellow, in an
exquisite poem describes the scene, and referring to the uncompleted
romance in the closing lines says:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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