The House of the Seven Gables (Penguin Classics) - Softcover

Hawthorne, Nathaniel

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140390057 ISBN 13: 9780140390056

Publisher: Penguin Classics, 1982

Synopsis

This enduring novel of crime and retribution vividly reflects the social and moral values of New England in the 1840s. Nathaniel Hawthorne's gripping psychological drama concerns the Pyncheon family, a dynasty founded on pious theft, who live for generations under a dead man's curse until their house is finally exorcised by love. Hawthorne, by birth and education, was instilled with the Puritan belief in America's limitless promise. Yet - in part because of blemishes on his own family history - he also saw the darker side of the young nation. Like his twentieth-century heirs William Faulkner and F. Scott Fitzgerald, Hawthorne peered behind propriety's façade and exposed the true human condition.

About this title

Review:

"A large and generous production, pervaded with that vague hum, that indefinable echo, of the whole multitudinous life of man, which is the real sign of a great work of fiction."
--Henry James

From the Back Cover:

Nathaniel Hawthorne's The House of the Seven Gables is a classic of American literature, written by one of the country's greatest writers. First published in 1851, the book is set in a mansion not unlike his cousin's many-gabled home in Salem, Massachusetts, which Hawthorne visited regularly. Caroline O. Emmerton's introductory note to this 1913 edition details the history of the house, from its construction circa 1668 to its purchase and restoration by Emmerton in the early 1900's. Emmerton founded the House of the Seven Gables Settlement Association in 1910, to serve the growing population of immigrant factory workers flocking to Salem. To help fund the Settlement House, the mansion opened its doors to the public as a museum, also in 1910. This edition is illustrated with 16 photographs of interior and exterior views of the house.

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin Classics
• Publication date: 1982
• ISBN 10: 0140390057
• ISBN 13: 9780140390056
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 368
• Editor: Stern Milton