Look Up, Washington, DC! A Walking Tour of DuPont Circle

COMPLETE MAJOR WORKS OF NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
[Authoritative and Unabridged KOBO EBOOK Edition]

All the Major Works of Nathaniel HAWTHORNE Including The Scarlet Letter, The House of Seven Gables, Rappaccini's Daughter, Young Goodman Brown

[Nathaniel Hawthorne]

OVERVIEW

The history of Hawthorne’s genius is in some sense a summary of all New England history.

From amid a simple, practical, energetic community, remarkable for its activity in affairs of state and religion, but by no means given to dreaming, this fair flower of American genius rose up unexpectedly enough, breaking the cold New England sod for the emission of a light and fragrance as pure and pensive as that of the arbutus in our woods, in spring.

The flower, however, sprang from seed that rooted in the old colonial life of the sternly imaginative pilgrims and Puritans. Thrusting itself up into view through the drift of a later day, it must not be confounded with other growths nourished only by that more recent deposit; though the surface-drift had of course its own weighty influence in the nourishment of it.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• FANSHAWE
• THE SCARLET LETTER
• THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES
• THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE
• THE MARBLE FAUN
• DOCTOR GRIMSHAWE'S SECRET : A ROMANCE
• MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE, AND OTHER STORIES
• THE SNOW IMAGE AND OTHER STORIES
• TALES
• ALICE DOANE’S APPEAL
• THE ANCESTRAL FOOTSTEP
• THE DOLLIVER ROMANCE
• SEPTIMIUS FELTON
• TANGLEWOOD TALES
• LIFE OF FRANKLIN PIERCE
• CHIEFLY ABOUT WAR MATTERS
• TWICE TOLD TALES
• THE GRAY CHAMPION.
• SUNDAY AT HOME.
• THE WEDDING-KNELL.
• THE MINISTER’S BLACK VEIL: A PARABLE.1
• THE MAYPOLE OF MERRY MOUNT.
• THE GENTLE BOY.
• MR. HIGGINBOTHAM’S CATASTROPHE.
• LITTLE ANNIE’S RAMBLE.
• WAKEFIELD.
• A RILL FROM THE TOWN-PUMP.
• THE GREAT CARBUNCLE.
• THE PROPHETIC PICTURES.5
• DAVID SWAN.
• SIGHTS FROM A STEEPLE.
• THE HOLLOW OF THE THREE HILLS.
• THE TOLL-GATHERER’S DAY.
• THE VISION OF THE FOUNTAIN.
• FANCY’S SHOW-BOX.
• DR. HEIDEGGER’S EXPERIMENT.
• LEGENDS OF THE PROVINCE-HOUSE.
• I – HOWE’S MASQUERADE.
• II. – EDWARD RANDOLPH’S PORTRAIT.
• III. – LADY ELEANORE’S MANTLE.
• IV. – OLD ESTHER DUDLEY.
• THE HAUNTED MIND.
• THE VILLAGE UNCLE.
• THE AMBITIOUS GUEST.
• THE SISTER-YEARS.
• SNOWFLAKES.
• THE SEVEN VAGABONDS.
• THE WHITE OLD MAID.
• PETER GOLDTHWAITE’S TREASURE.
• CHIPPINGS WITH A CHISEL.
• THE SHAKER BRIDAL.
• NIGHT-SKETCHES,
• ENDICOTT AND THE RED CROSS.
• THE LILY’S QUEST.
• FOOTPRINTS ON THE SEASHORE.
• EDWARD FANE’S ROSEBUD.
• THE THREEFOLD DESTINY.

EXCERPT FROM THE SCARLET LETTER

"A throng of bearded men, in sad-coloured garments and grey steeple-crowned hats, inter-mixed with women, some wearing hoods, and others bareheaded, was assembled in front of a wooden edifice, the door of which was heavily timbered with oak, and studded with iron spikes.

The founders of a new colony, whatever Utopia of human virtue and happiness they might originally project, have invariably recognised it among their earliest practical necessities to allot a portion of the virgin soil as a cemetery, and another portion as the site of a prison. In accordance with this rule it may safely be assumed that the forefathers of Boston had built the first prison-house somewhere in the Vicinity of Cornhill, almost as seasonably as they marked out the first burial-ground, on Isaac Johnson’s lot, and round about his grave, which subsequently became the nucleus of all the congregated sepulchres in the old churchyard of King’s Chapel. Certain it is that, some fifteen or twenty years after the settlement of the town, the wooden jail was already marked with weather-stains and other indications of age, which gave a yet darker aspect to its beetle-browed and gloomy front. The rust on the ponderous iron-work of its oaken door looked more antique than anything else in the New World. Like all that pertains to crime, it seemed never to have known a youthful era. Before this ugly edifice, and between it and the wheel-track of the street, was a grass-plot, much overgrown with burdock, pig-weed, apple-pern, and such unsightly vegetation, which evidently found something congenial in the soil that had so early borne the black flower of civilised society, a prison. But on one side of the portal, and rooted almost at the threshold, was a wild rose-bush, covered, in this month of June, with its delicate gems, which might be imagined to offer their fragrance and fragile beauty to the prisoner as he went in, and to the condemned criminal as he came forth to his doom, in token that the deep heart of Nature could pity and be kind to him."

ABOUT NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE

"He was a beautiful, natural, original genius, and his life had been singularly exempt from worldly preoccupations and vulgar efforts. It had been as pure, as simple, as unsophisticated, as his work. He had lived primarily in his domestic affections, which were of the tenderest kind; and then — without eagerness, without pretension, but with a great deal of quiet devotion — in his charming art."

Henry James

Nathaniel Hawthorne was already a man of forty–six, and a tale writer of some twenty–four years’ standing, when “The Scarlet Letter” appeared. Nathaniel Hawthorne 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 “Twice–Told Tales” 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.