Nathaniel Hawthorne

A first edition copy of Twice-Told Tales.

• Nathaniel Hawthorne (American)
• Boston: American Stationers Co., John B. Russell, 1837.
• 334 pages.
• Octavo.
• Publisher’s circular device on title page.
• Bound in publisher's brown embossed cloth, title stamped in gilt to spine, in a custom blue morocco pull-of case, gilt, by Stikeman. 

Hawthorne’s second book, and although it was not the dismal failure that Fanshawe had been, it attracted hardly any notice when it was issued thus in 1837. Now, of course, it is one of the most famous collections of short fiction in American literature. Vincent Starrett said of the story "Mr. Higginbotham's Catastrophe": "It comes close to becoming a detective story in the purest sense" and Edgar Allan Poe said the story is "vividly original and managed most dexterously" (see Queen's Quorum, p. 10).