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The House of the Seven Gables
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The House of the Seven Gables Paperback - 1981

by Nathaniel Hawthorne; Milton R. Stern (Editor); Introduction by Milton R. Stern


About this book

First published in 1851, The House of the Seven Gables is one of Hawthorne's defining works, a vivid depiction of American life and values, replete with brilliantly etched characters. The tale of a cursed house with a "mysterious and terrible past" and the generations linked to it, Hawthorne's chronicle of the Maule and Pyncheon families over two centuries reveals, in Mary Oliver's words, "lives caught in the common fire of history."

In a sleepy little New England village stands a dark, weather-beaten, many-gabled house. This brooding mansion is haunted by a centuries-old curse that casts the shadow of ancestral sin upon the last four members of the distinctive Pyncheon family. Mysterious deaths threaten the living. Musty documents nestle behind hidden panels carrying the secret of the family's salvation--or its downfall. Hawthorne called The House of the Seven Gables "a Romance," and freely bestowed upon it many fascinating gothic touches. A brilliant intertwining of the popular, the symbolic, and the historical, the novel is a powerful exploration of personal and national guilt, a work that Henry James declared "the closest approach we are likely to have to the Great American Novel.".

Summary

In a sleepy little New England village stands a dark, weather-beaten, many-gabled house. This brooding mansion is haunted by a centuries-old curse that casts the shadow of ancestral sin upon the last four members of the distinctive Pyncheon family. Mysterious deaths threaten the living. Musty documents nestle behind hidden panels carrying the secret of the family's salvation--or its downfall.Hawthorne called The House of the Seven Gables "a Romance," and freely bestowed upon it many fascinating gothic touches. A brilliant intertwining of the popular, the symbolic, and the historical, the novel is a powerful exploration of personal and national guilt, a work that Henry James declared "the closest approach we are likely to have to the Great American Novel."

From the publisher

FThis 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 faade and exposed the true human condition.

First Edition Identification

Ticknor, Reeds and Fields published a First Printing, First Edition in London, 1851. The hardcover is bound in brown cloth with gold lettering present on the spine


Heritage press published a First Edition in Norwalk, Connecticut, 1963.

Details

  • Title The House of the Seven Gables
  • Author Nathaniel Hawthorne; Milton R. Stern (Editor); Introduction by Milton R. Stern
  • Binding Paperback
  • Edition [ Edition: Repri
  • Pages 326
  • Volumes 1
  • Language ENG
  • Publisher Penguin Group, E Rutherford, New Jersey, U.S.A.
  • Date 1981-08-27
  • ISBN 9780140390056 / 0140390057
  • Weight 0.65 lbs (0.29 kg)
  • Dimensions 7.7 x 5 x 0.9 in (19.56 x 12.70 x 2.29 cm)
  • Ages 18 to UP years
  • Grade levels 13 - UP
  • Reading level 1320
  • Themes
    • Cultural Region: New England
    • Geographic Orientation: Massachusetts
  • Library of Congress subjects Domestic fiction, Historical fiction
  • Library of Congress Catalog Number 81002828
  • Dewey Decimal Code FIC

About the author

Nathaniel Hawthorne was born on July 4, 1804, in Salem, Massachusetts, the son and grandson of proud New England seafarers. He lived in genteel poverty with his widowed mother and two young sisters in a house filled with Puritan ideals and family pride in a prosperous past. His boyhood was, in most respects, pleasant and normal. In 1825 he was graduated from Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Maine, and he returned to Salem determined to become a writer of short stories. For the next twelve years he was plagued with unhappiness and self-doubts as he struggled to master his craft. He finally secured some small measure of success with the publication of his Twice-Told Tales (1837). His marriage to Sophia Peabody in 1842 was a happy one. The Scarlet Letter (1850), which brought him immediate recognition, was followed by The House of the Seven Gables (1851). After serving four years as the American Consul in Liverpool, England, he traveled in Italy; he returned home to Massachusetts in 1860. Depressed, weary of writing, and failing in health, he died on May 19, 1864, at Plymouth, New Hampshire.
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The House of the Seven Gables (Penguin Classics)
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The House of the Seven Gables (Penguin Classics)

by Hawthorne, Nathaniel; Stern, Milton R. [Introduction]

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

by Hawthorne, Nathaniel; Stern, Milton R. [Introduction]

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The House of the Seven Gables (Penguin Classics)

The House of the Seven Gables (Penguin Classics)

by Hawthorne, Nathaniel

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The House of the Seven Gables (The Penguin American Library)

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The House of the Seven Gables (The Penguin American Library)
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The House of the Seven Gables (The Penguin American Library)

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The House of the Seven Gables
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The House of the Seven Gables
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The House of the Seven Gables

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The House of the Seven Gables
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The House of the Seven Gables
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by Hawthorne, Nathaniel

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