The Complete Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne (Hawthorne’s Works).

HAWTHORNE, Nathaniel.

Item Number: 2553

Boston: Houghton Mifflin, (Riverside Press), 1884.

Octavo, 12 volumes. Three quarters leather. Complete set of Hawthorne’s works. Gilt tooling and titles to the spine, top edge gilt. In very good condition. A nice set.

The widely celebrated author has been revered not only by the public but by his literary contemporaries as well. Edgar Allen Poe said, "[t]he style of Hawthorne is purity itself. His tone is singularly effective-wild, plaintive, thoughtful, and in full accordance with his themes... We look upon him as one of the few men of indisputable genius to whom our country has as yet given birth" (McFarland, 1988). Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote later that "Nathaniel Hawthorne's reputation as a writer is a very pleasing fact, because his writing is not good for anything, and this is a tribute to the man" (Nelson, 1981). Henry James praised Hawthorne, saying, "The fine thing in Hawthorne is that he cared for the deeper psychology, and that, in his way, he tried to become familiar with it" (Porte, 1969). Lastly, the poet John Greenleaf Whittier wrote that he enjoyed the "weird and subtle beauty" in Hawthorne's tales (Woodland, 1985).