The Ascent To Fame of Nathaniel Hawthorne :: Biography Biographies Essays

The Ascent To Fame of Nathaniel Hawthorne The advent of Nathaniel Hawthornes recognition by the public as a literary master was long in coming and was not based mainly on the merits of his tales like The Ministers Black Veil. atomic number 1 James in his biography Hawthorne from 1879 testifies in eloquent fashion to the state of Hawthornes reputation in the 1830s as a writer I have said that in the United States at present authorship is a pedestal, and literature is the fashion but Hawthornes history is a proof that it was possible, l years ago, to write a great many little masterpieces without becoming known. He begins the preface to the Twice-Told Tales includes The Ministers Black Veil by remarking that he was for many years the obscurest man of letters in America. (chap. 2) Later James records the difficulty which Hawthorne had to face at times in getting his works print Mr. Lathrop learned from his surviving sister that after publishing Fanshawe he produced a group of shor t stories entitled Seven Tales of my Native Land, and that this lady retained a very favourable recollection of the work, which her brother had given her to read. But it never saw the light his attempts to get it published were unsuccessful, and at last, in a come across of and despair, the young author burned the manuscript. There is probably something autobiographic in the striking little tale of The Devil in Manuscript. They have been offered to seventeen publishers, says the belligerent of that sketch in regard to a pile of his own lucubrations (chap. 2) The Norton Anthology American Literature states that he was agonizingly slow in winning acclaim (547). Edgar Allen Poe, in a review of Hawthornes work, said in Godeys Ladys Book, November, 1847, no. 35, pp. 252-6 It was never the fashion (until lately) to speak of him in any summary of our best authors. . . . The peculiarity or sameness, or monotone of Hawthorne, would, in its mere character of peculiarity, and without referen ce to what is the peculiarity, suffice to deprive him of all chance of usual appreciation. But at his failure to be appreciated, we can, of course, no longer wonder, when we find him monotonous at decidedly the worst of all possible points--at that point which, having the least concern with Nature, is the farthest removed from the popular intellect, from the popular sentiment and from the popular taste.