HAWTHORNE, NATHANIEL | Twice-Told Tales. Boston: American Stationers Co., 1837

The Property of a Gentleman

HAWTHORNE, NATHANIEL

Twice-Told Tales. Boston: American Stationers Co., 1837

8vo. Publisher's advertisement at beginning and end; foxed. Publisher's textured green cloth, spine gilt-lettered; extremities rubbed, minor soiling, spine lightly sunned. In custom clamshell case.

First edition of Hawthorne's second book, and the first to bear his name on the title-page. One of 1,000 copies, with the page number on the table of contents for "The May-Pole of Merry Mount" incorrectly given as page 78 (for 77). The present tales had previously been published in periodicals (hence the name), and were collected here for the first time. Of Twice-Told Tales, Edgar Allan Poe once noted: "They belong to the highest region of Art — an Art subservient to genius of a very lofty order, the style is purity itself. Force abounds."