A broader experience is needed to compose a full-grown novel than to sketch a short tale. Scott was more than fifty when he published “Waverly.” Cooper wrote the “Spy” when thirty-three. Thackeray, the author of “Vanity Fair,” was almost forty when he finished that work. “Adam Bede” appeared when George Elliot was in her fortieth year; and the “Scarlet Letter,” greater than them all, did not appear until 1850, when its author was in his forty-seventh year. All critics readily agree that this romance is the masterpiece in American fiction. The only novel in the United States that can be compared with it is Mrs. Stowe’s “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” and, as a study of a type of life—Puritan life in New England—“The Scarlet Letter” is superior to Mrs. Stowe’s immortal work. One-half a century has passed since “The Scarlet Letter” was written; but it stands to-day more popular than ever before.
Enumerated briefly, the books written by Hawthorne in the order of their publication are as follows: “Fanshawe,” a novel (1826), suppressed by the author; “Twice-Told Tales” (1837), a collection of magazine stories; “Twice-Told Tales” (second volume, 1845) “Mosses from an Old Manse” (1846), written while he lived at the “Old Manse”; “The Scarlet Letter” (1850), his greatest book; “The House of Seven Gables” (1851), written while he lived at Lenox, Massachusetts; “The Wonder Book” (1851), a volume of classic stories for children; “The Blythedale Romance” (1852); “Life of Franklin Pierce” (1852), which was written to assist his friend Pierce, who was running for President of the United States; “Tanglewood Tales” (1853), another work for children, continuing the classic legends of his “Wonder Book,” reciting the adventures of those who went forth to seek the “Golden Fleece,” to explore the labyrinth of the “Minotaur” and sow the “Dragon’s Teeth.” Pierce was elected President in 1853 and rewarded Hawthorne by appointing him Consul to Liverpool. This position he filled for four years and afterwards spent three years in traveling on the Continent, during which time he gathered material for the greatest of his books—next to “The Scarlet Letter”—entitled “The Marble Faun,” which was brought out in England in 1860, and the same year Mr. Hawthorne returned to America and spent the remainder of his life at “The Wayside” in Concord. During his residence here he wrote for the “Atlantic Monthly” the papers which were collected and published in 1863 under the title of “Our Old Home.” After Mr. Hawthorne’s death, his unpublished manuscripts, “The Dolliver Romance,” “Septimius Felton” and “Dr. Grimshawe’s Secret,” were published. Mrs. Hawthorne, also, edited and published her husband’s “American and English Note-Books” and his “French and Italian Note-Books” in 1869. The best life of the author is perhaps that written by his son, Julian Hawthorne, which appeared in 1885, entitled “Nathaniel Hawthorne and His Wife; a Biography.”
A new and complete edition of Hawthorne’s works has been lately issued in twenty volumes; also a compact and illustrated library edition in seven volumes.
Nathaniel Hawthorne died May 18, 1864, while traveling with his friend and college-mate, Ex-President Pierce, in the White Mountains, and was buried near where Emerson and Thoreau were later placed in Concord Cemetery. Emerson, Longfellow, Lowell and Whittier were at the funeral. His publisher, Mr. Field, was also there and wrote: “We carried him through the blossoming orchards of Concord and laid him down in a group of pines on the hillside, the unfinished romance which had cost him such anxiety laid upon his coffin.” Mr. Longfellow, in an exquisite poem describes the scene, and referring to the uncompleted romance in the closing lines says:
“Ah, who shall lift that wand of magic power,
And the lost clue regain?
The unfinished window in Alladin’s tower
Unfinished must remain.”
The noble wife, who had been the inspiration and practical stimulus of the great romancer, survived her distinguished husband nearly seven years. She died in London, aged sixty, February 26, 1871, and was buried in Kensal Green Cemetery, near the grave of Leigh Hunt.