Book Description

This excellent guide to Hawthorne's public and private worlds will be a mandatory purchase for most libraries. Gale . . . gives detailed information on Hawthorne's milieu and his writings: his sources, plots, characters, and publication histories. . . . Appendixes include useful lists of Hawthorne's writings; his ancestors, family members, relatives, and inlaws; his friends and acquaintances; and other categories of people significant in his life and work. Annotations are clear, precise, readable. Quotes illuminate Hawthorne's opinions and prejudices. . . . Scholars, students, and browsers will be entertained and stimulated by some entries. Choice This volume offers the serious student of Nathaniel Hawthorne a comprehensive guide to all available primary and secondary data on his life and works. The encyclopedia presents, in one alphabetized sequence, approximately 1500 entries that identify all of Hawthorne's characters, summarize the plots of his fiction and the substance of his poems and non-fictional prose, and introduce his family members, friends, and associates. A chronological listing of the events in Hawthorne's life documents the personal relationships and richly diverse experiences that were reflected in his numerous stories, reviews, poems, nonfiction pieces, letters, and notebooks. Many of these were widely acclaimed; but dozens were overlooked until now; all are carefully cited in the encyclopedia. Nine appendices index Hawthorne's writings according to genre as well as the important people in his life by their relationship to him, whether personal or professional, casual or official. This extensive study concludes with a bibliography containing a list of references consulted in the preparation of the reference volume.