The House of Seven Gables: A Romance.

HAWTHORNE, Nathaniel.

Item Number: 95303

Boston: Ticknor, Reed, and Fields, 1851.

First edition of Hawthorne’s tale of an early 19th-century household “solitary, declining, haunted by an ancestral curse.” Octavo, original blind-stamped cloth with gilt titles to the spine, publisher’s ads, dated March, 1851, inserted at front. In near fine condition. Housed in a custom cloth and chemise case.

“The House of the Seven Gables was an extended description of such houses and households as [Hawthorne] had dealt with in many of his sketches. This house was described from an actual house in Salem, and this household was in some respects like the household of Hawthorne’s own youth— withdrawn, solitary, declining, haunted by an ancestral curse… With The House of the Seven Gables Hawthorne said farewell to the Salem in which he had grown up” (DAB).