San Antonio College Library

Collection of essays about Nathaniel Hawthorne written between 1842 and 1984.

Includes criticism of "Roger Malvin's burial," "The artist of the beautiful," "The custom house," "The scarlet letter," "The house of the seven gables," "The Blithedale romance," and "The marble faun."

From America's founding proclamations in the Declaration of Independence we take a sense of national aspirations for a political order that conforms to 'laws of nature and nature's God.' From this higher law emerge the principles enumerated in that revolutionary document. Are these principles confined to the political, or do they reach into the experience of citizens to inform conduct? Do they include family, local community, and individual face-to-face...

One of the first American short story writers, Nathaniel Hawthorne is also among the finest. A sampling of his stories reads like an anthology of great literature: My Kinsman, Major Molineux; The Celestial Railroad; The Minister's Black Veil; The Maypole of Merry Mount; The Birthmark. Common to all Hawthorne's work is an intellectual, emotional, and psychological richness that may well remain unparalleled in fiction today. Indeed, as scholars learn...