Most students of American literature probably can recall the playful French nom de plume—Monsieur de l’Aubépine—that Nathaniel Hawthorne occasionally employed to disguise some of his early attempts at authorship. But very few will know that Monsieur de l’Aubépine enjoyed a surprisingly intelligent critical reception in France during his lifetime. No fewer than six—often startling—essays about the American author appeared in leading French periodicals from 1852 to 1864. The French Face of Nathaniel Hawthorne, edited by Michael Anesko and N. Christine Brookes, recuperates these lost (or forgotten) critical assessments, making available to English readers for the first time the full texts of these extraordinary contemporaneous French critical essays. Besides offering elegantly rendered (and helpfully annotated) translations of the essays, Anesko and Brookes analyze them in relation to their immediate historical context and examine their unexpected relevance to later critical trends and arguments.

 

In 1853, when he was forty-nine and at the height of his literary career, Nathaniel Hawthorne accepted the post of U.S. consul at Liverpool, England, as a reward for writing the campaign biography of his college friend President Franklin Pierce. Hawthorne’s departure for Europe marked a turning point in his life. While Our Old Home, shrewd essays on his observations in England, The Marble Faun, a romance set in Italy, and the English Notebooks and French and Italian Notebooks were all results of his European residence, he returned to Concord in 1860 frustrated, depressed, and sick. He died in 1864.

What is Hawthorne's eminent literary reputation—"enduring" or "hypertrophied"? Both views are represented in this basic collection of seminal 19th- and 20th-century evaluations. Hawthorne's reputation appears secure, yet his work is still the subject of significant critical controversy. Reviews by Hawthorne's contemporaries take up the first section of The Recognition of Nathaniel Hawthorne—including an early review that predicted future greatness for the then-anonymous author of Fanshawe, and important pieces by Duyckinck, Longfellow, Poe, Melville, and Lowell. These estimates reveal many of the critical issues that were to concern successive generations of readers. Cohen's second section, covering the period from 1865 to 1910, includes criticism by Henry James, William Dean Howells, Paul Elmer More, Bliss Perry, and William C. Brownell. In the final section, T. S. Eliot, Vernon Louis Parrington, Austin Warren, F. O. Matthiessen, Hyatt H. Waggoner, Martin Green, and Frederick C. Crews are among the critics who explore, from a wide variety of viewpoints, the complex mind of this great American writer. The Recognition of Nathaniel Hawthorne is prefaced by a valuable survey of the criticism by Professor Cohen, and headnotes are provided for each of the selections.

 In one of his public disavowals of autobiography, Nathaniel Hawthorne informed his readers that external traits "hide the man, instead of displaying him," directing them instead to "look through the whole range of his fictitious characters, good and evil, in order to detect any of his essential traits." In this multidimensional biography of America's first great storyteller, Edwin Haviland Miller answers Hawthorne's challenge and reveals the inner landscapes of this modest, magnetic man who hid himself in his fiction. Thomas Woodson hails Miller's account as "the best biography of this most elusive of American authors."

Although most writers on Nathaniel Hawthorne touch on the importance of Salem, Massachusetts, to his life and career, no detailed study has been published on the powerful heritage bequeathed to him by his ancestors and present to him during his years in that town. In The Salem World of Nathaniel Hawthorne, Margaret B. Moore thoroughly investigates Hawthorne's family, his education before college (about which almost nothing has been known), and Salem's religious and political influences on him. She details what Salem had to offer Hawthorne in the way of entertainment and stimulation, discusses his friends and acquaintances, and examines the significant role of women in his life—particularly Mary Crowninshield Silsbee and Sophia Peabody.

Nathaniel Hawthorne felt a strong attachment to Salem. No matter what he wrote about the town, it was the locale for many of his stories, sketches, a novel, and a fragmentary novel. Salem history haunted him, and Salem people fascinated him. And Salem seems to have a perennial fascination for readers, not just for Hawthorne scholars. New information from primary sources, including letters (many unpublished), diaries, and contemporary newspapers, adds much not previously known about Salem in the early nineteenth century. Moore has found new sources in various manuscript collections, such as the privately owned Felt-White Collection and the Richards and Ashburner Papers in the National Library in Scotland. She also uses extensively the many manuscript collections at the Peabody Essex Museum.

By tracing the effect of Salem on Hawthorne's writing, The Salem World of Nathaniel Hawthorne makes clear that Hawthorne not only was aware of his "own dear native place" but also drew upon it consciously and subconsciously in his work. This book contributes to a better understanding of Hawthorne as man and writer and of Salem's vital part in his life and work.