Although most writers on Nathaniel Hawthorne touch on the importance of the town of Salem, Massachusetts, to his life and career, no detailed study has been published on the background bequeathed to him by his ancestors and present to him during his life in that town. The Salem World of Nathaniel Hawthorne examines Salem's past and the role of Hawthorne's ancestors in two of the town's great events - the coming of the Quakers in the 1660s and the...