allegorical tradition that stretches from Spenser ’ s Faerie Queene to Bunyan ’ s Pilgrim ’ s
Progress and two immensely popular forms of the British novel: the Gothic romances
and Sir Walter Scott ’ s historical novels.
By the time he graduated from Bowdoin College in 1825, Hawthorne had com-
mitted himself to a career as a writer. It would take him twelve years to have a book
published under his own name, but scholars have demolished the old portrait of a
shy, reclusive artist who withdrew from the world to produce brilliant masterpieces
during solitary moments in a Salem study. During the years 1825 – 37, Hawthorne
was actively struggling to make a place for his work in a literary marketplace that
provided frequent calls for the creation of a genuinely American literature but little
fi nancial support. Publishers found it relatively easy to pirate British masterpieces and
best
-
sellers without paying any royalties, and they generally expected American
writers to provide subsidies or guarantees. Hawthorne had the resources to arrange
for the anonymous publication of his fi rst novel, Fanshawe (1828), but he soon regret-
ted this decision, calling on his family and friends to burn their copies and never
publicly acknowledging his authorship. He also attempted to market a collection of
stories, Seven Tales of My Native Land , which may have been completed as early as
1825. His experiences with one printer proved so frustrating that Hawthorne recalled
and may even have destroyed the manuscript. Nevertheless, he focused his literary
energies on the creation of unifi ed books of short stories, volumes that may have looked
very much like the contemporary form we now call the short story cycle. The chief
infl uence here is clearly Washington Irving, who had both invented the short story
as an artistically developed work ideally suited to capturing the special qualities of
American life and had demonstrated that these works could be marketed within the
framework of carefully organized collections. In The Sketch Book (1819 – 20), Irving ’ s
American tales serve as a kind of comic counterpoint to the more sentimental medita-
tions of a genial traveler in Great Britain. In his Tales of a Traveller (1824), the stories
were grouped into thematic sections, including one which focused on literary life in
England.
52
Alfred Bendixen
Many of Hawthorne ’ s fi nest stories were originally intended to appear within the
contexts of carefully organized books. One of these projected volumes, Provincial Tales ,
would have contained most of the great historical tales of New England that have
established his current reputation as a master of the American short story. Although
these pieces have almost always been read and valued as individual works, it is pos-
sible that they might have achieved an even greater impact when organized into a
larger coherent pattern. Unfortunately, it is not possible to completely reconstruct
Provincial Tales or even to determine with certainty which of the early tales would
have been included. The situation is even more complicated with The Story Teller , a
projected collection of descriptive sketches and tales inspired by a journey through
the states of New Hampshire, Vermont, and New York that Hawthorne took in 1832.
His plan involved an itinerant storyteller who would describe his travels, the stories
he told on route to various audiences, and the reactions he elicited. Thus, the com-
pleted volume might have built up to an intriguing narrative that not only fused the
distinctive qualities of the American landscape with the works of fi ction they inspired,
but also provided a larger inquiry into the role of storytelling in the United States.
Hawthorne entrusted the manuscripts of Provincial Tales and The Story Teller to Samuel
Goodrich and Park Benjamin, both of whom ignored whatever pattern of unity these
volumes contained and printed individual tales and sketches anonymously in The
Token , the Salem Gazette , New England Magazine , or American Magazine . Anonymous
publication was the custom for most annuals like The Token and for many magazines
of the time, a practice that benefi ted publishers like Goodrich, who was quite happy
to be able to use multiple works by Hawthorne in a single issue without paying him
very much. Park Benjamin ’ s dismantling of The Story Teller refl ects an almost complete
disdain for whatever plan of organization the author had as well as a willingness to
cut and add material to serve the purpose of magazine publication. Hawthorne ulti-
mately had to accept literary hack work as a way to earn a living, agreeing in 1836
to edit The American Magazine of Useful and Entertaining Knowledge , a position that
mostly entailed compiling extracts or preparing paraphrases from various publications
for a promised salary of $500 a year. The bankruptcy of the publisher meant that he
received only $20 after six months of work. He earned another hundred dollars by
joining his sister, Elizabeth, in preparing Peter Parley ’ s Universal History, on the Basis
of Geography (1837) for the popular series of children ’ s books that ultimately made
Goodrich wealthy.
Hawthorne ’ s fi rst public success as an author came in 1837 with the publication
of Twice - Told Tales , a collection of eighteen previously published stories and sketches,
which appeared because a close friend secretly guaranteed the publisher against fi nan-
cial loss. Surprisingly, many of the stories that we now regard as his most important
were not included. Hawthorne passed over such powerful works as “ Roger Malvin ’ s
Burial
”
(1832),
“
My Kinsman, Major Molineaux
”
(1832), and
“
Young Goodman
Brown ” (1835) in order to make room for such genial sketches as “ Sights from a
Steeple ” (1831), “ A Rill from the Town Pump ” (1835), and “ Little Annie ’ s Rambles ”
(1835). In compiling this volume, he clearly rejected his earlier plan of a carefully
Hawthorne and the Short Story
53
unifi ed volume and decided to introduce himself to the literary world as a writer with
a wide range of interests and moods, one who could entertain his audience with cheer-
ful sketches as well as offer more disturbing, more challenging visions of reality with
tales like “ The Gentle Boy ” (1832) and “ The Minister ’ s Black Veil ” (1836). The
strategy seems to have worked. Contemporary reviews often singled out the lighter
sketches for praise, and the book sold well enough that Hawthorne was able to bring
out an enlarged edition in 1842, which added seventeen more works but again empha-
sized a wide variety of moods and tones. The fi rst two editions of Twice - Told Tales
present the author as a genial moralist who occasionally immerses the reader into a
surprisingly grim view of the world, but is just as likely to offer a conventional moral
and a cheerful conclusion. Throughout the rest of his career, Hawthorne continually
emphasized the importance of diversity in the production of books, often working
hard to ensure that dark, tragic moments would be counterba
lanced by lighter, comic
elements.
Hawthorne ’ s long apprenticeship in the unstable world of American literary pub-
lishing may have taught him the importance of winning over the broadest possible
audience, but it also showed him how diffi cult it would be to make a living as an
author. He became a regular contributor to the United States Magazine and Democratic
Review , but he also sought political appointments and even hoped to be named the
offi cial historiographer for the South Seas expedition of 1838. He fi nally secured a
post as a measurer of salt and coal in the Boston Custom House in 1839, a lucrative
position that he held until 1841, when he resigned to join the utopian community
of Brook Farm. During this period, much of his literary energy went into the produc-
tion of books for children, a form that he had learned from Goodrich could be quite
profi table if the author found the right balance between entertainment and education.
Hawthorne employed his extensive knowledge of the past to produce a series of three
books in 1840 – 1 that traced the history of New England from the fi rst Puritan set-
tlers to the time of the American Revolution: Grandfather ’ s Chair , Famous Old People ,
and Liberty Tree . They were collectively entitled The Whole History of Grandfather ’ s
Chair when they were reprinted along with the inferior Biographical Stories for Children
(1842) in the 1851 collection, True Stories from History and Biography . Hawthorne also
fell in love with Sophia Peabody, whom he eventually married in 1842. His decision
to join Brook Farm was based on the hope that a few hours of daily labor would
provide him with a cottage and the fi nancial security he needed both to maintain his
identity as a writer and to start married life. The experience proved very disappoint-
ing. Although most biographers emphasize his basic lack of sympathy with the
Transcendentalist idealists, Hawthorne is the only major American writer who devoted
his entire life savings and eight months of his life to a utopian experiment.
When the Brook Farm episode ended in failure and a lawsuit, Hawthorne and his
new wife moved into the Old Manse, the house in Concord, Massachusetts, where
Emerson had written Nature . Life in the center of American Transcendentalism proved
delightful to Hawthorne, who enjoyed being a part of a community of thinkers and
writers and responded by enlarging the scope of his literary range. If the major short
54
Alfred Bendixen
fi ction of the 1830s tends to be a complex exploration of human psychology within
the framework provided by the historical past, the stories of the 1840s show a new
engagement with speculative visions of the future and with allegorical musings on
the social and human condition. The writer who demonstrated that the American past
could be a rich subject for short fi ction now produced brilliant stories focusing on
mad scientists ( “ The Birth - mark ” [1843] and “ Rappaccini ’ s Daughter ” [1844]) and
apocalyptic visions of the end of the world ( “ The New Adam and Eve ” [1843] and
“ Earth ’ s Holocaust ” [1844]). In short, in the 1840s, Hawthorne helped invent the
genre we now call science fi ction. He also developed a new interest in the possibilities
of allegory and even contemplated a series to be called “ Allegories of the Heart. ” It
is in this period that he also writes some of his most interesting stories about the
nature of art and artists, including “ The Artist of the Beautiful ” (1844).
By 1846, American publishing conditions had begun to improve and Hawthorne
had established enough of a literary reputation that the fi rm of Wiley and Putnam
brought out a new collection of his short fi ction, Mosses from an Old Manse , in 1846.
Although the volume was a commercial success and attracted thoughtful criticism,
fi nancial security still seemed out of reach. The birth of a daughter, Una, in 1844
and a son, Julian, in 1846 added to his fi nancial responsibilities. When they lost
the lease on the Old Manse in 1845, the Hawthornes moved back to Salem, where
he gained a political appointment in 1846 as the surveyor of the Custom House, a
post that enabled him to provide for his family but not to produce much writing.
When the change in administrations led to his dismissal in 1849, Hawthorne faced
the greatest fi nancial crisis of his life and responded by re - energizing his literary
career. The appearance of
The Scarlet Letter
in 1850 clearly established him as a
signifi cant American author and also marked his shift from short fi ction to the novel,
a form that he recognized would be more lucrative. Originally, he planned to include
other tales in the volume, partly because he thought that The Scarlet Letter was not
long enough for book publication and partly because he wanted to balance its tragic
mood with lighter pieces, but his publisher persuaded him to provide only the novel
and a long introductory sketch, “ The Custom House. ” Hawthorne moved his family
to Lenox, Massachusetts, from 1850 to 1852 and then back to Concord, where they
purchased Bronson Alcott
’
s former house, The Wayside. Hawthorne went on to
produce two other novels, The House of the Seven Gables (1851), which he regarded
as his best work, and The Blithedale Romance (1852), which was based on his experi-
ences at Brook Farm. His literary success also led to the publication of The Snow -
Image, and Other Twice
-
told Tales
(1852), which collected tales from the previous
twenty years, and expanded editions of both Twice - Told Tales (1852) and Mosses from
an Old Manse
(1854). He also continued to produce books for children; both
A
Wonder - Book for Girls and Boys (1851) and Tanglewood Tales (1853) retell the classic
Greek myths within a frame narrative.
Nevertheless, Hawthorne had clearly decided to focus his literary energies on the
novel and to abandon the short story, even explicitly telling one editor that a long
story cost him much less
“
thought and trouble
”
than a collection of short tales
Hawthorne and the Short Story
55
(Wright 440). He bid farewell to the form with a fi nal satiric tale, “ Feathertop ”
(1852), in which a witch attempts to transform a scarecrow into a gentleman,
but discovers that he cannot survive after seeing himself in a mirror. In some sense,
Hawthorne ’ s most profi table book was the Life of Franklin Pierce (1852), the biography
he wrote for the successful presidential campaign of his old college friend, because it
resulted in his appointment as Consul to Liverpool. Although he produced relatively
little writing during his years in the foreign service (1853 – 7), he was able to step
down from this position with savings of over $30,000, a huge sum at that time and
much more than he ever made from his literary earnings. He also collected material
for a proposed English romance, but was never able to fi nish it to his satisfaction.
Later travel in Italy, however, provided the background material for his fi nal novel,
The Marble Faun (18
60), the best - selling of his books during his lifetime. His fi nal
years were marked by grief at the ravages wrought by the Civil War and by frustra-
tion at his inability to transform his English notes into a novel. He ended up using
his English notes to produce a series of graceful essays that were eventually collected
into a travel book, Our Old Home (1863). He died in 1863 while on a vacation tour
with his old friend, Franklin Pierce.
H awthorne and the Historical Tale
Hawthorne ’ s current reputation as a writer of the short story rests largely on the
historical tales he wrote in the 1830s, many of which were probably intended to appear
within the framework of Provincial Tales or The Story Teller . Unfortunately, we can
rarely be certain which tales would have appeared in which volumes and which might
have been intended to stand alone. It seems likely that
“
Roger Malvin
’
s Burial
”
(1832), “ The Gentle Boy ” (1832), and “ My Kinsman, Major Molineaux ” (1832) were
designed for Provincial Tales , but scholars differ about which collection might have
included two of his most famous and most anthologized tales, “ Young Goodman
Brown ” (1835) and “ The Minister ’ s Black Veil ” (1836). 2 Although we cannot fully
reconstruct these projected works, we know how Hawthorne dealt with a broad
expanse of American history in The Whole History of Grandfather ’ s Chair , the three -
volume history of New England he produced for children in 1840 – 1. Although largely
ignored by most scholars, Grandfather ’ s Chair provides a remarkably clear and detailed
guide to Hawthorne ’ s view of the basic facts of New England and to his larger con-
ception of the meaning of American history. The individual chapters are carefully set
within a frame narrative in which an elderly man recounts the history of New England
from the fi rst English settlers until the American Revolution by telling his grand-
children about the famous men and women who have occupied a family chair. The
presentation of the grandfather as narrator and the children as a responsive audience
who both react and ask questions refl ects Hawthorne ’ s ongoing concern with explor-
ing the narrative relationship between storyteller and audience and with the role of
A Companion to the American Short Story Page 13
