Nathaniel Hawthorne was on a remarkable run in the summer of 1852. He had previously won acclaim for his short tales, but a succession of novels that included The Scarlet Letter in 1850, The House of ...

Every generation of high school freshmen scrawls "symbol" and "character development" in the margins of "The Scarlet Letter" and then forgets Nathaniel Hawthorne. We don't hold the author in our ...

One of the great American writers of the 19th century never fully believed in his profession. For Nathaniel Hawthorne, writing was "a source of shame as much as pleasure and a necessity he could ...