From the author who gave us The Scarlet letter end The House of theSeven Gables, here is a comprehensive selection of his best shortstories, including:The Minister’s Black Veil;The Maypole of Merry Mount;Wakefield;The Prophetic Pictures;Dr. Heidegger’s Experiment;Endicott and the Red Cross;The Birthmark;Young Goodman Brown;Rappaccini’s Daughter;Feathertop;Roger Malvin’s Burial;Earth’s Holocaust;The Artist of the Beautiful;Ethan Brand;My Kinsman, Major Molineux.

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE died in 1864, in the midst of the Civil War--a social revolution that he profoundly distrusted.He was traveling in New Hampshire for his health with his old college friend, Franklin Pierce. whose Presidency of the United States 0853-1857) had been a failure because of his personal weakness and his attempts to compromise with the South, to head off the coming struggle. Hawthorne had also feit himself to be a failure. His sudden death in a New Hampshire inn ended his struggle to climb out of the despondency and creative frustration of his last years, when he was unable to complete any of his projects. He had always felt that to be a "mere storyteller" in New England demanded too much of his imaginative will. Despite a fair success with his first novels, The Scarlet Letter (1850) and The House of the Seven Gables (1851), he had never been able to assure an income by writing fiction, he had never felt sure of any public for it, and at the end no longer felt in command of his peculiar, delicate, hard-won gift. After the Civil War was over a new, brazenly materialistic society came into being, and Hawthorne ceased to be an example--if indeed he had ever been one--to writers of fiction; he was from now on to be a school classic, one of the New England worthies to people who for patriotic or didactic reasons liked to celebrate New England. He had become another name in the New England Temple, like Emerson, who had never been able to read him (or any other novelist), and whose own theories Hawthorne thonght charming moonshine.

Introduction: The Artist of New England

 by Alfred Kazlv

From Twice-Told Tales

The Minister’s Black Veil

The Msypole of Merry Mount

Wakefield

The Prophetic Pictures

Dr. Heidegger’s Experiment

Endicott and the Red Cross

From Mosses from an old Manse

The Birthmark

Young Goodman Brown

Rappaccini’s Daughter

Festhertop: A Moralized Legend

Roger Malvin’s Burial

Earth’s Holocaust

The Artist of the Beautiful

From The Snow Image

Ethan Brand

My Kinsman,Major Molineux

Bibliography