Books

Boston: American Stationers Co.,, 1837. May we live to hear them told a hundred times" - Edgar Allan Poe First edition of the author's second book, his first short story collection, and one of the greatest collections of short fiction in American literature. Twice-Told Tales is the first book Hawthorne published under his own name: his short stories had previously been published in periodicals anonymously, as had his first novel, Fanshawe, but in 1837 his "status as 'the obscurest man of letters in America' ended when Twice-Told Tales was published with his name on the cover... The eighteen tales Hawthorne selected from the dozens already in print were clearly calculated to display his range and to win literary recognition. Genial sketches of everyday life, such as 'Little Annie's Ramble' and the even more popular 'A Rill from the Town-Pump', appealed especially to his women readers, as did the celebration of marital love that Longfellow liked best, 'The Great Carbuncle'. But…

Twice-Told Tales is a collection of previously published short stories by Nathaniel Hawthorne that was duely noted for its depiction of moral allegories concerning the American Puritanism of Hawthorne's time.