MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE

Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1864. 2 volumes. A new edition, carefully revised by the Author. 8vo, in the publisher's original brown cloth, the boards ornately decorated in blind, the spines ruled in blind and gilt lettered. 286; 297 pp. A very clean and handsome set, the text very bright and well preserved, the cloth clean and bright and very well preserved but for some light chipping to the headcaps. AN ATTRACTIVE SET OF ONE OF HAWTHORNE'S BEST COLLECTIONS OF SHORT STORIES.. Hawthorne spent three years in the Old Manse in Concord. The Old Manse is a historic manse famous for its American literary associations. It is now owned and operated as a nonprofit museum by the Trustees of Reservations. In 1842, the American writer Nathaniel Hawthorne rented the Old Manse for $100 a year. He moved in with his wife, transcendentalist Sophia Peabody. Prior to their arrival at the Manse, Henry David Thoreau created a vegetable garden for the couple. The Hawthornes lived in the house for three years. Previously the manse had been home to Ralph Waldo Emerson.
MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE is the best and most important of the three literary collections Hawthorne published during his lifetime. Many of the tales are allegories and, as in much of Hawthorne's best works, focus on the negative side of human nature. Herman Melville, a close friend of Hawthorne, noted this aspect in his review of it-- "This black conceit pervades him through and through. You may be witched by his sunlight,—transported by the bright gildings in the skies he builds over you; but there is the blackness of darkness beyond; and even his bright gildings but fringe and play upon the edges of thunder-clouds."
This particular printiing of MOSSES was published in the year of the author's death.