Old News

by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Old News by Nathaniel Hawthorne
********************************************************** We are pleased to offer thousands of books for the Kindle, including thousands of hard-to-find literature and classic fiction books.
Click on our Editor Name (eBook-Ventures) next to the book title above to view all of the titles that are currently available. **********************************************************

Genres: Short Stories

48 pages, Kindle Edition

First published November 1, 2005

About the author

Nathaniel 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.

Reviews

[John Anthony · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting reading of old New England but the turgid style detracted somewhat.

[Bill Kerwin · Rating 2 out of 5]

“Old News,” written in 1836 but unpublished in book form until The Snow Image (1852) is certainly one of Hawthorne’s lesser works. Still, it is of interest to any lover Hawthorne, for it demonstrates his keen interests in the sources of social history, and the way in which his own Massachusetts’ society changed over time.

“Old News,” a work in three parts, consists of Hawthorne’s descriptions of—and reflections upon—three collections of newspapers from three distinct periods: I. “Old News” (circa 1730), II. “The Old French War” (late 1750’s to early 1760’s), and III. “The Old Tory” (late 1770’s to early 1780’s).

In the first period, under the reign of George II, Hawthorne sees a variegated, burgeoning culture, its Puritan base now intertwined with working class Irish and black slaves, all caught up in the pursuit of commerce. (It must be noted that Hawthorne is wrong-headed on the subject of Northern slavery: “the slaves, we suspect, were the merriest part of the population, since it was their gift to be merry in the worst of circumstances; and they endured, comparatively, few hardships, under the domestic sway of our fathers.”) In the second period, Hawthorne emphasizes the martial character of the people, but also touches on the presence of a new “polite literature” and a surprising hint of luxury in middle-class life. In the last era, Hawthorne concentrates—perhaps because they were so foreign to his time—upon the views of an old loyal follower of the King, dismayed by this new movement toward revolution.

At the end of the the entire piece, Hawthorne makes it clear that he prefers the older newspapers to the newer:

Whatever antique fashions lingered into the War of the Revolution, or beyond it, they were not so strongly marked as to leave their traces in the public journals. Moreover, the old newspapers had an indescribable picturesqueness, not to be found in the later ones. Whether it be something in the literary execution, or the ancient print and paper, and the idea that those same musty pages have been handled by people once alive and bustling amid the scenes there recorded, yet now in their graves beyond the memory of man; so it is, that in those elder volumes we seem to find the life of a past age preserved between the leaves, like a dry specimen of foliage.

[Sohail · Rating 3 out of 5]

A series of comments and observations about old news, written in collections of old newspapers.

Quite boring for the average reader. However, there are some truly remarkable