"Mosses from an Old Manse" is Nathaniel Hawthorne' s second story collection, first published in 1846 in two volumes and featuring sketches and tales written over a span of more than twenty years, including such classics as " Young Goodman Brown, " " The Birthmark, " and " Rappaccini' s Daughter." Herman Melville deemed Hawthorne the American Shakespeare, and Henry James wrote that his early tales possess " the element of simple genius, the quality of imagination. That is the real charm of Hawthorne' s writing-- this purity and spontaneity and naturalness of fancy."

As we turn over these volumes we feel that the pieces that spring most directly from his fancy, constitute, as I have said (putting his four novels aside), his most substantial claim to our attention. It would be a mistake to insist too much upon them; Hawthorne was himself the first to recognize that. . . . the valuable element in these things was not what Hawthorne put into them consciously, but what passed into them without his being able to measure it -- the element of simple genius, the quality of imagination. This is the real charm of Hawthorne's writing -- this purity and spontaneity and naturalness of fancy. -- Henry James

Mosses from an Old Manse is a short story collection by Nathaniel Hawthorne, named for the old manse where he and his wife lived for the first three years of their marriage. The first edition was published in 1846, and the second edition in 1854.

Mosses from an Old Manse is a short story collection by Nathaniel Hawthorne, first published in 1846. The collection included several previously-published short stories and was named in honor of The Old Manse where Hawthorne and his wife lived for the first three years of their marriage. Stories include: The Birthmark; Young Goodman Brown; Rappaccini's Daughter; Mrs. Bullfrog; The Celestial Railroad; The Procession of Life; Feathertop: A Moralized Legend; Egotism; or, The Bosom Serpent; Drowne's Wooden Image; Roger Malvin's Burial; and The Artist of the Beautiful.

Published in 1846, Mosses from an Old Manse, by Nathaniel Hawthorne is a collection of allegories. The book is named after 'The Old Manse,' where Hawthorne and his wife lived for the first three years of their marriage. This aggregation of short stories contemplates the limitations of human imagination. The work brings out Hawthorne's fascination with the elusive nature of evil, his mistrust of progress, his disdain for moral absolutism, and his puritan heritage.

This is classic book of all time

This is the annotated edition including both volumes of the original book, a rare biographical essay on the author, as well as an essay by Edgar Allan Poe on Hawthorne's tale-writing. In 1846 the "Mosses from an Old Manse" was published in New York in two volumes, which contain, on the whole, his best work in short stories, and are prefaced by one of his most delightful essays, "The Old Manse." In some of them, it may be, the allegory is too apparent, but in general they are very deep and searching studies of the heart and conscience. Among the best are " Young Goodman Brown," " Roger Malvin's Burial," " Rappaccini's' Daughter," which is usually placed highest, and " Drowne's Wooden Image." " The Birthmark " and " The Artist of the Beautiful" also rank high in the estimation of critics. "The Celestial Railroad " is a clever satire on modern religion; "The Intelligence Ofiice," "The Procession of Life," and "Earth's Holocaust" are conceits with a burden of symbolic meaning. "The Old Apple-Dealer " is a study of a character with the least possible amount of coloring. " P.'s Correspondence" is mainly interesting, perhaps, for the curious speculation, under the guise of a lunatic's vagaries, on what age might have made of those early poets of the century who died young or in middle life, - especially of what its sobering and conservative tendencies would have done for Byron, Burns, Shelley, and Keats. " The Hall of Fantasy," " A Select Party," and " A Virtuoso's Collection" are ingeniously executed fancies. "Mrs. Bullfrog" is a light, humorous sketch, and " Fire Worship" and " Buds and Bird Voices" are delightful essays.

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