The Project Gutenberg EBook of Hawthorne, by Henry James, Junr.

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Title: Hawthorne
(English Men of Letters Series)

Author: Henry James, Junr.

Release Date: June 12, 2006 [EBook #18566]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HAWTHORNE ***

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English Men of Letters

EDITED BY JOHN MORLEY

HAWTHORNE

BY

Henry James, JUNR.

London
MACMILLAN AND CO
1879

* * * * *

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.

EARLY YEARS

CHAPTER II.

EARLY MANHOOD

CHAPTER III.

EARLY WRITINGS

CHAPTER IV.

BROOK FARM AND CONCORD

CHAPTER V.

THE THREE AMERICAN NOVELS

CHAPTER VI.

ENGLAND AND ITALY

CHAPTER VII.

LAST YEARS

* * * * *

HAWTHORNE.

CHAPTER I.

EARLY YEARS.

It will be necessary, for several reasons, to give this short sketch
the form rather of a critical essay than of a biography. The data for
a life of Nathaniel Hawthorne are the reverse of copious, and even if
they were abundant they would serve but in a limited measure the
purpose of the biographer. Hawthorne's career was probably as tranquil
and uneventful a one as ever fell to the lot of a man of letters; it
was almost strikingly deficient in incident, in what may be called the
dramatic quality. Few men of equal genius and of equal eminence can
have led on the whole a simpler life. His six volumes of Note-Books
illustrate this simplicity; they are a sort of monument to an
unagitated fortune. Hawthorne's career had few vicissitudes or
variations; it was passed for the most part in a small and homogeneous
society, in a provincial, rural community; it had few perceptible
points of contact with what is called the world, with public events,
with the manners of his time