Mosses from an Old Manse

Book excerpt: "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."