The selection of "Backgrounds and Sources" focuses on Hawthorne's visitto Brook Farm in 1841, as reported in his letters and The AmericanNotebooks, as well as on other experiences and observations which findexpression in the novel.The essays in "Criticism" include fifteen "Contemporary Reviews" thatlocate the problems of the novel pursued by later critics in a moredetailed and sophisticated fashion."Modern Essays in Criticism" represent the perspec-tives of Irving Howe, Roy R. Male, A. N. Kaul, Leo B. Levy, Hans-Joachim Lang, Philip Rahv, Allan B. Lefcowitz, Barbara F. Lefcowitz, Nina Baym, Hyatt H. Waggoner, Frederick C. Crews, Kelley Griffith, Jr., Louis Auchincloss, James H.Justus, and Kent Bales. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864) was born in Salem, Massachusetts, and made his ambition to be a writer while still a teenager. He graduated from Bowdoin College in Maine, where the poet Longfellow was also a student, and spent several years travelling in New England and writing short stories before his best-known novel The Scarlet Letter was published in 1850. His writing was not at first financially rewarding and he worked as measurer and surveyor in the Boston and Salem Custom Houses. In 1853 he was sent to Liverpool as American consul and then lived in Italy before returning to the US in 1860, where he died in his sleep four years later. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
