9- ] American Literature - Nathaniel Hawthorne

9- ] American Literature

1 - ] Nathaniel Hawthorne 1804 – 1864

Nathaniel Hawthorne  was a novelist and short story writer. Hawthorne’s works have been labelled ‘dark romanticism,’ dominated as they are by cautionary tales that suggest that guilt, sin, and evil are the most inherent natural qualities of humankind. His novels and stories, set in a past New England, are versions of historical fiction used as a vehicle to express themes of ancestral sin, guilt and retribution.

Although his natural inclination was to express himself through the short story form, he is best known for his novels, and particularly his most famous, The Scarlet Letter, a romance in an historical setting – puritan Boston, Massachusetts, in the 17th century.  It is the story of the unfortunate Hester Prynne, who gives birth to a child as a result of an affair with a preacher, and struggles to create a new life of repentance. The novel explores the themes of sin, guilt, and legalism.  D.H. Lawrence wrote that there could be no more perfect work of the American imagination.

Hawthorne is ranked among the top American writers. He is admired by other writers, particularly, as a skillful craftsman with an admirable sense of form, which is highly architectural. The structure of his novels, The Scarlet Letter being a striking example, is so tightly integrated that it would be impossible to omit any paragraph without doing damage to the whole. The book’s four characters are inextricably bound together in a complex situation that seems to be insoluble, and the tightly woven plot has a unity of action that rises slowly but inexorably to a highly dramatic climactic scene. In the short stories, too, there is that tight construction. Hawthorne is admired, too for the directness of his writing, and its clarity

Hawthorne’s greatness is due partly to his moral insight. He was deeply concerned with original sin and guilt and the claims of law and conscience. He delved deeply and honestly into life, in which he saw much suffering and conflict but also the redeeming power of love. He is uncompromising in his presentation of those things, firmly and resolutely scrutinizing the psychological and moral facts of the human condition. His greatest short stories and The Scarlet Letter are characterized by a depth of psychological and moral insight unequalled by any other American writer.

Early Career

For the next 12 years, Hawthorne lived in comparative isolation in an upstairs chamber at his mother's house, where he worked at perfecting his writing craft. He also began keeping notebooks or journals, a habit he continued throughout his life. He often jotted down ideas and descriptions, and his words are now a rich source of information about his themes, ideas, style experiments, and subjects.

In 1828, he published his first novel, Fanshaw: A Tale, at his own expense. Fanshaw was a short, imitation Gothic novel and poorly written. Dissatisfied with this novel, Hawthorne attempted to buy up all the copies so that no one could read it. He did not publish another novel for almost 25 years. By 1838, he had written two-thirds of the short stories he was to write in his lifetime. None of these stories gained him much attention, and he could not interest a publisher in printing a collection of his tales until 1837, when his college friend Horatio Bridge backed the publishing of Twice-Told Tales, a collection of Hawthorne's stories that had been published separately in magazines. His schoolmate and friend, Longfellow, reviewed the book with glowing terms. Edgar Allan Poe, known for his excoriating reviews of writers, not only wrote warmly of Hawthorne's book but also took the opportunity to define the short story in his now famous review. Twice-Told Tales is considered a masterpiece of literature, and it contains unmistakably American stories.

Financial Burdens and Marriage

In 1838, Hawthorne met Sophia Amelia Peabody, and the following year they were engaged. It was at this time that Hawthorne invested a thousand dollars of his meager capital in the Brook Farm Community at West Roxbury. There he became acquainted with Ralph Waldo Emerson and the naturalist Henry David Thoreau. These transcendentalist thinkers influenced much of Hawthorne's thinking about the importance of intuition rather than intellect in uncovering the truths of nature and human beings. Hawthorne left this experiment in November 1841, disillusioned with the viewpoint of the community, exhausted from the work, and without financial hope that he could support a wife. From this experience, however, he gained the setting for a later novel, The Blithedale Romance.

In a trip to Boston after leaving Brook Farm, Hawthorne reached an understanding about a salary for future contributions to the Democratic Review. He and Sophia married in Boston on July 9, 1842, and left for Concord, Massachusetts, where they took up residence in the now-famous "Old Manse."

"Old Manse"

Hawthorne's life at the "Old Manse" was happy and productive, and these were some of the happiest years of his life. He was newly married, in love with his wife, and surrounded by many of the leading literary figures of the day: Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Margaret Fuller, and Bronson Alcott. During this time, Hawthorne wrote for the Democratic Review and produced some tales that would be published in 1846 in Mosses from an Old Manse.

Financial problems continued to plague the family, however. The birth of their first child, Una, caused Hawthorne to once again seek a financially secure job. With the help of his old friends, Hawthorne was appointed a surveyor for the port of Salem. His son, Julian, was born in 1846. Although the new job eased the financial problems for the family, Hawthorne again found little time to pursue his writing. Nevertheless, during this time, he was already forming ideas for a novel based on his Puritan ancestry and introduced by a preface about the Custom House where he worked. When the Whigs won the 1848 election, Hawthorne lost his position. It was a financial shock to the family, but it fortuitously provided him with time to write The Scarlet Letter.

The Golden Years of Writing

During these years Hawthorne was to write some of the greatest prose of his life. In 1849, Hawthorne wrote The Scarlet Letter, which won him much fame and greatly increased his reputation. While warmly received here and abroad, The Scarlet Letter sold only 8,000 copies in Hawthorne's lifetime.

In 1849, when the family moved to Lennox, Massachusetts, Hawthorne made the acquaintance of Herman Melville, a young writer who became a good friend. Hawthorne encouraged the young Melville, who later thanked him by dedicating his book, Moby Dick, to him. During this — the "Little Red House" period in Lennox — Hawthorne wrote The House of the Seven Gables and some minor works that were published in 1851.

Around the time that Nathaniel and Sophia's second daughter, Rose, was born, the family moved to West Newton, where Hawthorne finished and published his novel about the Brook Farm experience, The Blithedale Romance, and also A Wonder Book for Girls and Boys. Because there was little to no literature published for children, Hawthorne's book was unique in this area.

Hawthorne is also admired for his mastery of allegory and symbolism. His characters’ dilemmas and their response to them express larger generalizations about the problems of human existence. The power and gravity with which he deals with that results in true tragedy.

And now, in the 21st century Hawthorne holds a pre-eminent place in American letters. He was a major influence in the artistic development of such writers as Herman Melville, Henry James, William Dean Howells, Mary Jane Wilkins Freeman, Sarah Orne Jewett, William Faulkner, and Flannery O’Connor – members of the so-called Hawthorne School. His focus on the past of the nation, especially the Puritan era, his delving into the social and psychological forces underlying human behavior, his reliance on symbols to convey rich and ambivalent value to his stories and romances, his insistence on finding and understanding the sources of humanity ‘s darker side, and his exploration of such themes as isolation, guilt, concealment, social reform, and redemption not only created a following among aspiring writers but also brought him into the nation’s classrooms, where The Scarlet Letter still holds a firm place.

The Scarlet Letter was one of the first mass-produced novels in America and became an instant best seller, selling over 2,500 copies in the first two weeks. It has been praised for its sentimentality and moral purity by the likes of D. H. Lawrence, who said that there could be no more perfect work of the American imagination .Though Edgar Allan Poe -- a fellow author in the Dark Romantic Movement and influential literary critic -- wrote negative reviews of Hawthorne's stories. Poe did not admire stories that were allegorical and moral in nature so his criticism was in form. Though even he begrudgingly acknowledged that Hawthorne's style "is like purity itself." Hawthorne's highest regarded short stories include My Kinsman, Major Molineaux (1832), Young Goodman Brown (1835), Feathertop (1852), and The Minister's Black Veil.

Now I am going to break from my biographical narrative to add a personal note. After a lifetime of reading, Nathaniel Hawthorne has emerged as one of my absolute favorite authors of all time. If you are not having fun while reading Hawthorne you are doing it wrong! For instance, My Kinsman, Major Molineaux is a comic short story and should be enjoyed as such (it does have a "tragic" ending). It's the story of a young "hayseed" on his first visit to the "big city" and he suffers the embarrassments one would expect and few extras thrown in for good measure. It could inspire a Monty Python skit. I think there is a secret to understanding and appreciating Hawthorne's body of work. And I will share that with you. But be warned; he is not a cheap date! You will have to work hard before you can truly love this writer.

The price of admission is that one must read and study over the introductory chapter to The Scarlet Letter, The Custom-House. Then read the Preface to the Second Edition and then -- sorry -- read The Custom-House again. As much as it will not feel like it at the time, if you are a high school student, and your English teacher has asked you to specifically read The Custom-House, it's because he or she loves you and cares about your education (which as Twain famously pointed out, should not be confused with your schooling). You will know that you truly understand those two introductory chapters when you realize the Nathaniel Hawthorne was a mid-1850s Bad Ass who explicitly, purposely, and repeatedly "stuck it to the man", even after, heck especially after they asked him to stop! I also do not think you can properly understand The Scarlet Letter without understanding The Custom-House (and also marking the sins of Hawthorne's forefathers). I assure you, the effort is worth the reward. [And I do offer belated apologies to my sophomore English teacher for my essay entitled, "Why I Hate English Class," which I tendered like a smart-aleck after my first bout with The Custom-House way back in 1981.]

For the record, Hawthorne died in his sleep in 1864 during a tour of the White Mountains in Plymouth, New Hampshire. He was educated at one of my favorite small universities, Bowdoin College, where he was a student from 1821-1824.

Later Writing and Death

In Concord, the Hawthornes found a permanent house, along with nine acres

Recent criticism has focused on Hawthorne's narrative voice, treating it as a self-conscious rhetorical construction, not to be conflated with Hawthorne's own voice. Such an approach recognizes the artistry of the writer, complicating the long-dominant tradition of regarding Hawthorne as a gloomy moralist.

Hawthorne enjoyed a brief but intense friendship with Herman Melville beginning on August 5, 1850, when the two authors met at a picnic hosted by a mutual friend. Melville had just read Hawthorne's short story collection Mosses from an Old Manse, which Melville later praised in a famous review, "Hawthorne and His Mosses." Subsequently the two struck up a correspondence initiated by Melville. Melville's letters to Hawthorne provide insight into the composition of how Melville developed his story of the great white whale and its nemesis Captain Ahab, but Hawthorne's letters to Melville did not survive. The correspondence ended shortly after Moby-Dick was published by Harper and Brothers.

When The Whale, first published in England in October 1851, was republished as Moby-Dick in New York one month later, Melville dedicated the book to Hawthorne, “in appreciation for his genius.” Similarities in The House of Seven Gables and the Moby-Dick stories are known and noted in literary and passing circles. The long lost responses to Melville would surely shed more light on this comparison.

Edgar Allan Poe, another contemporary, wrote important but unflattering reviews of both Twice-Told Tales and Mosses from an Old Manse. Hawthorne's opinions of Poe's work remains unknown.

Writings

Hawthorne is best-known today for his many short stories (he called them "tales") and his four major romances of 1850–1860: The Scarlet Letter (1850), The House of the Seven Gables (1851), The Blithedale Romance (1852), and The Marble Faun (1860). (A previous book-length romance, Fanshawe, was published anonymously in 1828. Hawthorne would disown it in later life, going so far as to implore friends who still owned copies to burn it.)

Before publishing his first collection of tales in 1837, Hawthorne wrote scores of short stories and sketches, publishing them anonymously or pseudonymously in periodicals such as The New-England Magazine and The United States Democratic Review. (The editor of the Democratic Review, John L. O'Sullivan, was a close friend of Hawthorne's.) Only after collecting a number of his short stories into the two-volume Twice-Told Tales in 1837 did Hawthorne begin to attach his name to his works.

Much of Hawthorne's work is set in colonial New England, and many of his short stories have been read as moral allegories influenced by his Puritan background. "Ethan Brand" (1850) tells the story of a lime-burner who sets off to find the Unpardonable Sin, and in doing so, commits it. One of Hawthorne's most famous tales, “The Birth-Mark” (1843), concerns a young doctor who removes a birthmark from his wife's face, an operation which kills her. Other well-known tales include "Rappaccini's Daughter" (1844), "My Kinsman, Major Molineux" (1832), "The Minister's Black Veil" (1836), "Ethan Brand" (1850) and "Young Goodman Brown" (1835). "The Maypole of Merrymount" recounts a most interesting encounter between the Puritans and the forces of anarchy and hedonism. Tanglewood Tales (1853) was a re-writing some of the most famous of the ancient Greek myths in a volume for children, for which the Tanglewood estate in Stockbridge and music venue was named.

The Scarlet Letter

With mounting debt and a growing family, Hawthorne moved to Salem. A life-long Democrat, political connections helped him land a job as a surveyor in the Salem Custom House in 1846, providing his family some needed financial security. However, when Whig President Zachary Taylor was elected, Hawthorne lost his appointment due to political favoritism. The dismissal turned into a blessing giving him time to write his masterpiece, The Scarlet Letter, the story of two lovers who clashed with the Puritan moral law. The book was one of the first mass-produced publications in the United States and its wide distribution made Hawthorne famous

Themes and analysis

The Scarlet Letter, published in 1850, is one of the few American world classics. It is generally considered to be Hawthorne's masterpiece. Set in Puritan New England in the seventeenth century, the novel tells the story of Hester Prynne, who gives birth after committing adultery, refusing to name the father. She struggles to create a new life of repentance and dignity. Throughout, Hawthorne explores the issues of grace, legalism, and guilt.

The Scarlet Letter is framed in an introduction (called "The Custom House") in which the writer, a stand-in for Hawthorne, purports to have found documents and papers that substantiate the evidence concerning Prynne and her situation. The narrator also claims that when he touched the letter it gave off a "burning heat… as if the letter were not of red cloth, but red hot iron." There remains no proof of a factual basis for the discovery in "the Custom House."

Plot summary

Hester Prynne, the story's protagonist, is a young married woman whose husband was presumed to have been lost at sea on the journey to the New World. She begins a secret adulterous relationship with Arthur Dimmesdale, the highly regarded town minister, and becomes pregnant with a daughter, whom she names Pearl. She is then publicly vilified and forced to wear the scarlet letter "A" on her clothing to identify her as an adulteress, but loyally refuses to reveal the identity of her lover. She accepts the punishment with grace and refuses to be defeated by the shame inflicted upon her by her society. Hester's virtue becomes increasingly evident to the reader, while the self-described "virtuous" community (especially the power structure) vilify her, and are shown in varying states of moral decay and self-regard. Hester only partially regains her community's favor through good deeds and an admirable character by the end of her life.

Dimmesdale, knowing that the punishment for his sin will be shame or execution, does not admit his relationship with Prynne. In his role as minister he dutifully pillories and interrogates Hester in the town square about her sin and the identity of the father. He maintains his righteous image, but internally he is dogged by his guilt and the shame for his weakness and hypocrisy. The work is tinged with a heavy irony, as among the townspeople he receives admiration while Hester receives social contempt, but for the reader the opposite is true. Finally, Prynne's husband, Roger Chillingworth, reappears without disclosing his identity to anyone but Hester. Suspecting the identity of Hester's partner, he becomes Dimmesdale's caretaker and exacts his revenge by exacerbating his guilt, while keeping him alive physically. Ultimately Dimmesdale—driven to full public disclosure by his ill health—collapses and dies, delivering himself from his earthly tormenter and personal anguish.

Influence

Nathaniel Hawthorne, with contemporaries Melville and Whitman, broke from European fictional conventions to forge a distinctly American literature. Hawthorne understood that America's religious past informed the nation's life and identity. He was absorbed by the enigma of evil and sought to clarify human responsibility within the context of social and moral expectations.

Nathaniel Hawthorne was born on July 4, 1804, in Salem, Massachusetts. His family, the Hathornes, had lived in Salem since the seventeenth century. A descendent of the Puritan judges William Hathorne and John Hathorne, a judge who oversaw the Salem Witch Trials, Hawthorne chose to add the “w” to his name when he was in his early twenties. Hawthorne grew up with his mother and uncles in Salem and Raymond, Maine. His father, a ship’s captain, died of yellow fever in 1808. Many of Hawthorne’s childhood poems and stories were concerned with sailing and the sea. Hawthorne suffered temporary paralysis during his youth and studied literature at home with the lexicographer Joseph Emerson Worcester. Hawthorne then attended Bowdoin College from 1821 to 1825, where he wrote his early poems and a novel. He was classmates with Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and they developed a friendship later in life. Hawthorne moved back to Salem after graduation.

While best known for his novels, letters, and short stories, Hawthorne also wrote a few poems, notably “The Ocean,” published in the Salem Gazette in 1825, and “Oh Could I Raise the Darken’d Veil,” which appeared in 1820 in the Spectator, a weekly newspaper that Hawthorne created and edited, starting in the summer of that year.

Hawthorne is best known for his four major romances: The Marble Faun (Ticknor, Reed, & Fields, 1860); The Blithedale Romance (Ticknor, Reed, & Fields, 1852); The House of the Seven Gables (Ticknor, Reed, & Fields, 1851); and, most importantly, The Scarlet Letter (Ticknor, Reed, & Fields, 1850). He was also a successful short story writer. He gained fame when he published his stories in the collection Twice-Told Tales (American Stationers Co., 1837). During this period, Hawthorne began to attach his own name to his prose. His best-known works are “Ethan Brand” (Ticknor, Reed, & Fields, 1850); “The Birth-Mark,” published in James Russell Lowell’s literary periodical, The Pioneer, in 1843; “Young Goodman Brown,” published in The New-England Magazine in 1835; and “My Kinsman, Major Molineux,” published in the illustrated gift book The Token and Atlantic Souvenir in 1832.

In 1986 Hawthorne was inducted into The American Poets’ Corner, joining the symbolic American pantheon of letters, alongside Robert Frost, the first twentieth-century poet to be inducted. Hawthorne was also recognized and admired by his contemporaries. Herman Melville gave Hawthorne’s short stories rave reviews, in addition to dedicating Moby Dick to him. However, Melville’s view of Hawthorne soured later in life, and Melville presented him unflatteringly in his poem “Clarel.” Longfellow wrote a review of Twice-Told Tales, in which he called Hawthorne a “new star” who wrote with “the heaven of poetry.” Henry James wrote a biographical critical essay on Hawthorne, describing him as “a beautiful, natural, original genius […] no one has had just that vision of life, and no one has had a literary form that more successfully expressed his vision […] he was not simply a poet. He combined in a singular degree the spontaneity of the imagination with a haunting care for moral problems. Man’s conscience was his theme, but he saw it in the light of a creative fancy which added, out of its own substance, an interest, and, I may almost say, an importance.”

Hawthorne died on May 19, 1864, in Plymouth, New Hampshire, while on a mountain tour with Pierce. Hawthorne is buried at Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Concord

Poems

Nathaniel Hawthorne was born on July 4, 1804, in Salem, Massachusetts. His family, the Hathornes, had lived in Salem since the seventeenth century. A descendent of the Puritan judges William Hathorne and John Hathorne, a judge who oversaw the Salem Witch Trials, Hawthorne chose to add the “w” to his name when he was in his early twenties. Hawthorne grew up with his mother and uncles in Salem and Raymond, Maine. His father, a ship’s captain, died of yellow fever in 1808. Many of Hawthorne’s childhood poems and stories were concerned with sailing and the sea. Hawthorne suffered temporary paralysis during his youth and studied literature at home with the lexicographer Joseph Emerson Worcester. Hawthorne then attended Bowdoin College from 1821 to 1825, where he wrote his early poems and a novel. He was classmates with Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and they developed a friendship later in life. Hawthorne moved back to Salem after graduation.

While best known for his novels, letters, and short stories, Hawthorne also wrote a few poems, notably “The Ocean,” published in the Salem Gazette in 1825, and “Oh Could I Raise the Darken’d Veil,” which appeared in 1820 in the Spectator, a weekly newspaper that Hawthorne created and edited, starting in the summer of that year.

Hawthorne is best known for his four major romances: The Marble Faun (Ticknor, Reed, & Fields, 1860); The Blithedale Romance (Ticknor, Reed, & Fields, 1852); The House of the Seven Gables (Ticknor, Reed, & Fields, 1851); and, most importantly, The Scarlet Letter (Ticknor, Reed, & Fields, 1850). He was also a successful short story writer. He gained fame when he published his stories in the collection Twice-Told Tales (American Stationers Co., 1837). During this period, Hawthorne began to attach his own name to his prose. His best-known works are “Ethan Brand” (Ticknor, Reed, & Fields, 1850); “The Birth-Mark,” published in James Russell Lowell’s literary periodical, The Pioneer, in 1843; “Young Goodman Brown,” published in The New-England Magazine in 1835; and “My Kinsman, Major Molineux,” published in the illustrated gift book The Token and Atlantic Souvenir in 1832.

In 1986 Hawthorne was inducted into The American Poets’ Corner, joining the symbolic American pantheon of letters, alongside Robert Frost, the first twentieth-century poet to be inducted. Hawthorne was also recognized and admired by his contemporaries. Herman Melville gave Hawthorne’s short stories rave reviews, in addition to dedicating Moby Dick to him. However, Melville’s view of Hawthorne soured later in life, and Melville presented him unflatteringly in his poem “Clarel.” Longfellow wrote a review of Twice-Told Tales, in which he called Hawthorne a “new star” who wrote with “the heaven of poetry.” Henry James wrote a biographical critical essay on Hawthorne, describing him as “a beautiful, natural, original genius […] no one has had just that vision of life, and no one has had a literary form that more successfully expressed his vision […] he was not simply a poet. He combined in a singular degree the spontaneity of the imagination with a haunting care for moral problems. Man’s conscience was his theme, but he saw it in the light of a creative fancy which added, out of its own substance, an interest, and, I may almost say, an importance.”

In 1838 Hawthorne became engaged to his future wife, illustrator Sophia Peabody. While his writing often brought him satisfying recognition, it secured him very little income and Hawthorne often struggled to make ends meet, taking various positions throughout his life. As he said in 1820: “I have almost given up writing Poetry […] No Man can be a Poet & a Book-Keeper at the same time.” Hawthorne sought work at the Boston Custom House in 1839, as well as at the agricultural cooperative Brook Farm in 1841. By 1842 Hawthorne’s writing provided enough income for him to marry Sophia, and they settled for three years in Concord, Massachusetts. Hawthorne’s neighbors were Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and the philosopher and educator Bronson Alcott, making the village the leading center of Transcendentalism. While Hawthorne associated with the thinkers and shared many of their philosophies, he preferred the company of Franklin Pierce, his old college friend, who later became the fourteenth U.S. president. Hawthorne wrote a campaign biography on Pierce, titled Life of Franklin Pierce (Ticknor, Reed, & Fields, 1852). When Pierce became president in 1853, Hawthorne was given the position of U.S. consul in Liverpool. He resigned in 1857 and spent his later years traveling in France and Italy and writing.

Books

In Colonial Days , Septimius Felton , The Blithedale Romance , The House of Seven Gables , The Marble Faun , The Scarlet Letter

Short Stories

An Old Woman's Tale , A Rill from the Town-Pump , Benjamin Franklin ,

Chippings with a Chisel , Circe's Palace , David Swan , Dr. Heidegger's Experiment , Drowne's Wooden Image , Edward Fane's Rosebud , Egotism; or, The Bosom Serpent , Endicott and the Red Cross , Ethan Brand , Fancy's Show-Box , Feathertop , Fire Worship , Footprints on the Seashore , Graves and Goblins , How Theseus Slays the Minotaur , John Inglefield's Thanksgiving , Legends of the Province House: I. Howe's Masquerade , Legends of the Province House: II. Edward Randolph's Portrait , Legends of the Province House: III. Lady Eleanore's Mantle , Legends of the Province House: IV. Old Esther Dudley , Little Annie's Ramble , Monsieur du Miroir

Mosses from an Old Manse , Mr. Higginbotham's Catastrophe , Mrs. Bullfrog

My Kinsman, Major Molineux , Night-Sketches , Oliver Cromwell , Passages from a Relinquished Work , Pegasus, The Winged Horse , Peter Goldthwaite's Treasure , Rappaccini's Daughter , Roger Malvin's Burial , Sights from a Steeple , Sir Isaac Newton , Sketches from Memory , Snowflakes , Sunday At Home , The Ambitious Guest , The Antique Ring , The Artist of the Beautiful ,

The Birthmark , The Boston Massacre , The Canterbury Pilgrims , The Celestial Railroad , The Chimaera , The Christmas Banquet , The Devil in Manuscript , The Dragon's Teeth , The Gentle Boy , The Ghost of Dr. Harris ,

The Golden Fleece , The Golden Touch , The Gorgon's Head , The Gray Champion , The Great Carbuncle , The Great Stone Face , The Hall of Fantasy , The Haunted Mind , The Hollow of the Three Hills , The Intelligence Office , The Lilly's Quest , The Maypole of Merry Mount , The Minister's Black Veil , The Minotaur , The New Adam and Eve , The Old Apple-Dealer ,

The Paradise of Children , The Pomegranate Seeds , The Procession of Life ,

The Prophetic Pictures , The Pygmies , The Seven Vagabonds , The Shaker Bridal , The Sister-Years , The Snow Image: A Childish Miracle , The Threefold Destiny , The Three Golden Apples , The Toll-Gatherer's Day ,

The Village Uncle , The Vision of the Fountain , The Wayside. Introductory. ,

The Wedding Knell , The White Old Maid , The Wives of the Dead , Wakefield , Young Goodman Brown

Poems

Address to the Moon , Earthly Pomp , Go to the Grave , Oh Could I Raise the Darken'd Veil

Essays

Buds and Bird-Voices

My Visit to Niagara