Nathaniel Hawthorne was already a man of forty-six; and a tale writer of some twenty-four yearsrsquo; standing; when ldquo;The Scarlet Letterrdquo; appeared. He was born at Salem; Mass.; on July 4th; 1804; son of a sea-captain. He led there a shy and rather sombre life; of few artistic encouragements; yet not wholly uncongenial; his moody; intensely meditative temperament being considered. Its colours and shadows are marvelously reflected in his ldquo;Twicendash;Told Talesrdquo; and other short stories; the product of his first literary period. Even his college days at Bowdoin did not quite break through his acquired and inherited reserve; but beneath it all; his faculty of divining men and women was exercised with almost uncanny prescience and subtlety. ldquo;The Scarlet Letter;rdquo; which explains as much of this unique imaginative art; as is to be gathered from reading his highest single achievement; yet needs to be ranged with his other writings; early and late; to have its last effect. In the year that saw it published; he began ldquo;The House of the Seven Gables;rdquo; a later romance or prose-tragedy of the Puritanndash;American community as he had himself known it mdash; defrauded of art and the joy of life; ldquo;starving for symbolsrdquo; as Emerson has it. Nathaniel Hawthorne died at Plymouth; New Hampshire; on May 18th; 1864.Hawthornes contributions to magazines were numerous; and most of his tales appeared first in periodicals; chiefly in ldquo;The Token;rdquo; 1831ndash;1838; ldquo;New England Magazine;rdquo; 1834;1835; ldquo;Knickerbocker;rdquo; 1837ndash;1839; ldquo;Democratic Review;rdquo; 1838ndash;1846; ldquo;Atlantic Monthly;rdquo; 1860ndash;1872
#3375369 in eBooks 2016-10-01 2016-10-01File Name: B01MA3ATAT
Review
