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The Complete Short Stories of Nathaniel Hawthorne
The writer's New England heritage is well represented in 72 short stories of keen psychological insight
615 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1959
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111 people want to read
About the author
Nathaniel Hawthorne
5,525 books3,624 followersNathaniel Hawthorne was a 19th century American novelist and short story writer. He is seen as a key figure in the development of American literature for his tales of the nation's colonial history.
Shortly after graduating from Bowdoin College, Hathorne changed his name to Hawthorne. Hawthorne anonymously published his first work, a novel titled Fanshawe, in 1828. In 1837, he published Twice-Told Tales and became engaged to painter and illustrator Sophia Peabody the next year. He worked at a Custom House and joined a Transcendentalist Utopian community, before marrying Peabody in 1842. The couple moved to The Old Manse in Concord, Massachusetts, later moving to Salem, the Berkshires, then to The Wayside in Concord. The Scarlet Letter was published in 1850, followed by a succession of other novels. A political appointment took Hawthorne and family to Europe before returning to The Wayside in 1860. Hawthorne died on May 19, 1864, leaving behind his wife and their three children.
Much of Hawthorne's writing centers around New England and many feature moral allegories with a Puritan inspiration. His work is considered part of the Romantic movement and includes novels, short stories, and a biography of his friend, the United States President Franklin Pierce.
Shortly after graduating from Bowdoin College, Hathorne changed his name to Hawthorne. Hawthorne anonymously published his first work, a novel titled Fanshawe, in 1828. In 1837, he published Twice-Told Tales and became engaged to painter and illustrator Sophia Peabody the next year. He worked at a Custom House and joined a Transcendentalist Utopian community, before marrying Peabody in 1842. The couple moved to The Old Manse in Concord, Massachusetts, later moving to Salem, the Berkshires, then to The Wayside in Concord. The Scarlet Letter was published in 1850, followed by a succession of other novels. A political appointment took Hawthorne and family to Europe before returning to The Wayside in 1860. Hawthorne died on May 19, 1864, leaving behind his wife and their three children.
Much of Hawthorne's writing centers around New England and many feature moral allegories with a Puritan inspiration. His work is considered part of the Romantic movement and includes novels, short stories, and a biography of his friend, the United States President Franklin Pierce.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
May 28, 2020
If there's a tragedy in the life and work of Nathaniel Hawthorne, which is arguable considering that he's known as one of the preeminent American writers of the 19th century, it's that at heart he was always a short story writer trapped in a world where novels paid. He was endlessly trying to find ways to package these stories for consumption, but story collections never sold as well as novels and didn't garner the respect that novels garnered, leaving him to spend much of his life toiling to either find ways to produce longer fiction at the expense of short fiction or trying to sell his short fiction. In no way do I wish to disparage the novels- they were ultimately very good- but the short stories truly showed the full range of Hawthorne's abilities and imagination. While Poe gets credit for being a leader in the creation of horror and mystery genre writing, people think of Hawthorne as a man who wrote long verbose descriptions of the hypocrisy of puritans. But the range he shows in these stories- fantasy, allegory, science fiction, tales of the revolution, satire, and yes, puritans and witches- show him as a writer of varied interests and enthusiasms capable of working in a wide range of styles and executing them successfully. Since any given one of them (for the most part anyway) would be deserving of a wide ranging conversation, I'm not going to get into the weeds of individual stories. I would say that even in this "complete" edition (and I've done no research to see if any additional stories have been unearthed since this was published in the 1950s) you run into very few clunkers. You don't need to read 72 Hawthorne stories for your life to be complete, a good "best of" anthology that pulls from the three collections published in his lifetime would probably suffice. I will say that (for me at least) the quality of the stories in the end "Miscellaneous" section of what I can only presume to be published but uncollected works were pretty well as high as those that did get published in book form, with "Alice Doane's Appeal" and what may be his funniest story, "My Wife's Novel" hiding there. If your only exposure to Hawthorne was a painful high school experience with "The Scarlet Letter," I do suggest reading some of the stories. They aren't what you think they are.
March 5, 2017
Reading Hawthorne’s works gives you plenty of “meta-matter,” to contemplate—as is to be expected from allegories—but I was surprised by how much of it in this anthology can still be applied to modern life. When you travel back through the many epochs and technological breakthroughs to Hawthorne's time via his writings, you find the same basic fears, joys, faults, and struggles that sculpt our lives today.
The exhortations in some stories are overt. This is sort of a letdown for the sleuth types that like to sift through mystery and intrigue to discover the author’s message, but their being affirmed by the characters gave them greater force and credence. There are those, though, where you have to dig below the surface; “The Snow-Image: A Childish Miracle” is a fine example. Read literally, it’s just a tale of an obtuse dad that melts his kids’ snowman, who he thinks is a real child, by bringing it inside despite their pleas to leave it outside. But contemplating it further, one deciphers Hawthorne's message: Even when attempting to do good, if you disregard the opinions and wishes of others, you can do harm.
As an added bonus, through reading this anthology one gets a crash course in the intricacies of sixteenth- to eighteenth-century New England history. Hawthorne paints over fact with a layer of fiction to provide insight into the politics and customs of the day in an entertaining way. He shows how both caused distress in the average person's life, especially in "The Gentle Boy," which depicts the conflict in a certain village between the Quakers and the Puritans. Their mutual animosity stemmed from ideological differences that eventually led to violent means of forcing conformity, and caught in the middle is a young boy who is orphaned by the persecution of his family. It was yet another cautionary tale whose hand seemed to reach through the ages to today to yet again wag its rebuking finger at mankind.
Some stories have silly character names and outlandish circumstances like a Poe story, but they are easier to read than Poe’s because half of it isn't in a foreign language or in reference to a figure from classical literature. A small number were pretty bland—more informative than enthralling, like a Terms of Use agreement—but made up for it by the last sentence or two conveying some unique insight that I found myself contemplating days later. Fewer still didn’t excite me much at all in any regard.
Overall, this is a fantastic collection of Hawthorne's short stories; the perspective-changing, age-old wisdom that is bestowed upon the reader far outweighs the few short stories that are lackluster. The language, to my pleasant surprise, was a daunting but ultimately surmountable obstacle; if you enjoy a vocabulary challenge, this is a pretty stout exercise. He was quite adept at vividly describing scenes and circumstances and emotions—allowing the reader to experience the beauty and torment of life right along with the characters—and it was on full display in these stories.
The exhortations in some stories are overt. This is sort of a letdown for the sleuth types that like to sift through mystery and intrigue to discover the author’s message, but their being affirmed by the characters gave them greater force and credence. There are those, though, where you have to dig below the surface; “The Snow-Image: A Childish Miracle” is a fine example. Read literally, it’s just a tale of an obtuse dad that melts his kids’ snowman, who he thinks is a real child, by bringing it inside despite their pleas to leave it outside. But contemplating it further, one deciphers Hawthorne's message: Even when attempting to do good, if you disregard the opinions and wishes of others, you can do harm.
As an added bonus, through reading this anthology one gets a crash course in the intricacies of sixteenth- to eighteenth-century New England history. Hawthorne paints over fact with a layer of fiction to provide insight into the politics and customs of the day in an entertaining way. He shows how both caused distress in the average person's life, especially in "The Gentle Boy," which depicts the conflict in a certain village between the Quakers and the Puritans. Their mutual animosity stemmed from ideological differences that eventually led to violent means of forcing conformity, and caught in the middle is a young boy who is orphaned by the persecution of his family. It was yet another cautionary tale whose hand seemed to reach through the ages to today to yet again wag its rebuking finger at mankind.
Some stories have silly character names and outlandish circumstances like a Poe story, but they are easier to read than Poe’s because half of it isn't in a foreign language or in reference to a figure from classical literature. A small number were pretty bland—more informative than enthralling, like a Terms of Use agreement—but made up for it by the last sentence or two conveying some unique insight that I found myself contemplating days later. Fewer still didn’t excite me much at all in any regard.
Overall, this is a fantastic collection of Hawthorne's short stories; the perspective-changing, age-old wisdom that is bestowed upon the reader far outweighs the few short stories that are lackluster. The language, to my pleasant surprise, was a daunting but ultimately surmountable obstacle; if you enjoy a vocabulary challenge, this is a pretty stout exercise. He was quite adept at vividly describing scenes and circumstances and emotions—allowing the reader to experience the beauty and torment of life right along with the characters—and it was on full display in these stories.
May 17, 2018
With engaging writing, going through the supernatural and gothic world, Hawthorne is one of the exponents of this style in the early half of the 18th century, influencing many other writers who came after him.
Young Master Brown, for example, how many movie scenes we see were possibly inspired by this tale written in 1835, in which the protagonist seeing the most ordinary people in society: from pastors and priests to politicians to merchants, from acquaintances to unknown pedestrians of a city - watches them closely and realizes that they are devils or faithful of a satanic cult. I remember for example, The Devil's Advocate, or a TV adaptation of an episode of Grimm.
In this tale, the characters' names are related to the symbolic, a direct metaphor of the story itself, as in American Gods, by Neil Gaiman. Here we find a woman named Faith and the protagonist Goodman.
From the dark and mysterious adventure of a satanic cult, without the certainty of that if it is a dream or reality, and the participation in it of a kind of secret society with the most unlikely members, the author points to two profound reflections: the greater evil would be that which dwells within people? And guilt and obsession could intoxicate an individual's mind in a radical way until death?
Young Master Brown, for example, how many movie scenes we see were possibly inspired by this tale written in 1835, in which the protagonist seeing the most ordinary people in society: from pastors and priests to politicians to merchants, from acquaintances to unknown pedestrians of a city - watches them closely and realizes that they are devils or faithful of a satanic cult. I remember for example, The Devil's Advocate, or a TV adaptation of an episode of Grimm.
In this tale, the characters' names are related to the symbolic, a direct metaphor of the story itself, as in American Gods, by Neil Gaiman. Here we find a woman named Faith and the protagonist Goodman.
From the dark and mysterious adventure of a satanic cult, without the certainty of that if it is a dream or reality, and the participation in it of a kind of secret society with the most unlikely members, the author points to two profound reflections: the greater evil would be that which dwells within people? And guilt and obsession could intoxicate an individual's mind in a radical way until death?
July 30, 2020
Keep on my shelf
January 25, 2008
He's not just a master allegorist. H. was too wise to believe narrative power comes from pushing symbols around on the page. And yet the stories in this one have the deft construction and allure of fables.
March 11, 2016
I liked these stories. Not many of them were happy, however, so don't read them when you're depressed. A few were funny. Hawthorne almost always made sure he linked his stories to morals or cautions or remarks about theology the reader was supposed to take to heart and ponder over.
August 17, 2007
Hawthorne is a master short story writer. Each tale holds a moral but it's set in heavy symbolism. He's not a writer to be overlooked.
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July 24, 2011Reading Earth's Haulocaust.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews