The Autographs of Saint Mary's: Nathaniel Hawthrone
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2024-04-28T09:49:25-07:00
SMC Call Number: S433 C91 1519 Rare Book Room, Saint Mary’s College (Notre Dame, IN)
[1900] [1837]
Boston, Massachusetts
Sarah Noonan
Nathaniel Hawthorne was born in 1804 in Salem, Massachusetts. He had ancestry back to the colonial period in America, and this ancestry was a major influence on his work. He went to Bowdoin college where he studied literature and was able to meet his other New England contemporaries at the time. Hawthorne was a part of the Dark Romanticism movement and was influential in the gothic literary movement. He also was a part of Transcendentalism in America, and he even started a commune about his experimental way of living. Transcendentalism was the movement that believed that everyone has good in them inherently. But as Hawthorne grew older, he separated himself away from this movement. Yet, his work often reflects the ideas about morality and righteousness felt by other authors in the Transcendentalist movement. Hawthorne’s books often discussed moral questions and guilt. He liked to look at how guilt doesn’t just affect one person but can affect a whole community. His most famous book, The Scarlet Letter, addresses these questions directly. It was one of the first mass produced novels in America and was a bestseller. His other major novels are Twice-Told Tales, The House of Seven Gables, and the Blithedale Romance.
Twice-Told Tales is a collection of short stories written by Nathaniel Hawthorne. It originally started off as 18 stories but 24 more stories were added to it in a later edition. The stories in Twice-Told Tales talk about Colonial America, and his curiosity in moral inquiries, but also have a gothic twist to them. Our copy of Twice-Told Tales was published in 1900. It contains an added page that has an attached ship’s log with Nathaniel Hawthrone’s signature. And it’s not a traditional autograph but it is unique. This autograph adds another level where you have to unfurl the ship’s log to see the autograph, essentially putting yourself in Hawthrone’s space looking over the log to sign it. A signed ship’s log with Nathaniel Hawthorne’s signature would be a very rare item and it is unique that the original owner kept it in one of his own books.
