The Old Manse (Magill’s Survey of American Literature, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Nathaniel Hawthorne
- First Published: 1846
- Type of Work: Essay
- Genres: Nonfiction, Essays
- Subjects: Family or family life, United States or Americans, Authors or writers, Nineteenth century, Rural or country life, Houses, mansions, or manors, Massachusetts
- Locales: Concord, MA
“The Old Manse” is an example of the kind of short pieces that Hawthorne published in collections of short stories, although they were not stories but sketches or essays. Other notable examples of such rambling descriptive pieces, which Hawthorne loved to write, are “The Toll Bridge” and “Rills from the Town Pump” in his Twice-Told Tales. As Poe pointed out in his famous review of that book, these nonfiction pieces are characterized by a feeling that Poe called repose. They arc almost in the opposite manner of short stories, in that nothing dramatic ever happens in...
[The entire page is 560 words long]
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