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Hawthorne's Histories, Hawthorne's World

From Salem to Somewhere Else

Michael J Colacurcio author

Format:Hardback

Publisher:Anthem Press

Published:17th May '22

Should be back in stock very soon

Hawthorne's Histories, Hawthorne's World cover

Essays on Hawthorne by Michael J Colacurcio since the publication of his ground-breaking Province of Piety, exploring both Hawthorne’s most memorable early tales and his later productions, concluding with original close-readings of the Our Old Home and The Marble Faun

Hawthorne’s Literary History collects together the essays Professor Colacurcio has written on Hawthorne since the publication of his ground-breaking Province of Piety, elaborating and refining his analyses of how Hawthorne’s most memorable early tales “do history,” but proceeding then to explore the later productions of that author’s distinguished career. 

Hawthorne’s Histories, Hawthorne’s World picks up Hawthorne where The Province of Piety left him, extending the  historical and theological reading there developed of the early Puritan and revolutionary tales Hawthorne wrote in birthplace Salem on to the contemporary tales, sketches, essays, and finally four published romances based on his stays in Brook Farm, Boston, Concord, Lenox, Salem, Liverpool, and Rome.

A collection of essays rather than a single, continuously argued monograph, Hawthorne’s Histories, Hawthorne’s World collects together the essays Professor Colacurcio has written on Hawthorne since the publication of his ground-breaking Province of Piety,  elaborating and refining his analyses of how Hawthorne’s most memorable early tales “do history,” but proceeding then to explore the later productions of that author’s distinguished career. The result, in Colacurcio’s patient analysis, is something like Hawthorne’s history of his own times.

In this new volume, he discusses Hawthorne's career more comprehensively and adds a compelling reading of the two "Allegories of the Heart" in Mosses from an Old Manse (1846)—Choice


Michael Colacurcio brings to this book his wicked wit, keen intelligence and more knowledge of Hawthorne’s writing, sources and historical imagination than anyone else alive. The result is a masterful overview of Hawthorne’s multi-phased literary corpus—from Salem’s ghosts of the past all the way to Rome and The Marble Faun.” —John Gatta, William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of English Emeritus, The University of the South - Sewanee, USA


“In Hawthorne’s Histories, Hawthorne’s World, the leading scholar of Hawthorne and his place in early American literature and thought extends the scope of his magisterial book The Province of Piety in a number of new directions. Taken together, the two books give us the most complete and incisive critical assessment of Hawthorne we are ever likely to have.” —Eric J. Sundquist, Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities, Emeritus, Johns Hopkins University, USA


“The combination of magisterial command of both primary and secondary sources, stylistic flair and incendiary originality is more than rare, even singular. Professor Colacurcio advances a distinguished career with his reflections on one of the five big men featured by F. O. Matthiessen, he whom the MLA’s last polling of college and university Americanists ranked the most important of nineteenth-century US authors. Colacurcio’s Hawthorne’s Histories will be the one all future commentators will have to consult before attempting to add to the considerable archive of Hawthorne criticism.” —R. C. De Prospo, Ernest A. Howard Chair of English Literature, Chair, American Studies, Washington College, USA


Thirteen rich chapters on Hawthorne’s process of writing, his cultural sources, and his narratology. - Nathaniel Hawthorne Review

ISBN: 9781839983221

Dimensions: 229mm x 153mm x 26mm

Weight: 454g

302 pages