Offers critical entries on Hawthorne's novels, short stories, travel writing, criticism, and other works, as well as portraits of characters, including Hester P

Features a biographical chapter that relates Hawthorne's life to his work, a chapter on his career and contributions to American literature, and chapters that a

Herman Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne met in 1850 and enjoyed for sixteen months an intense but brief friendship. Taking advantage of new interpretive tools s