The house of the seven gables . aracteristics of a commu-nity for whom he cherishes a proper respect and a naturalregard. He trusts not to be considered as unpardonablyoffendrng, by laying out a street that infringes upon no-bodys private rights, and appropriating a lot of land rm PEEFACE. which had no visible owner, and building a house, of ma-terials long in use for constructing castles in the air. Thepersonages of the tale — though they give themselves outto be of ancient stability and considerable prominence —are really of the authors own making, or, at all events,of his own mixing; their
The house of the seven gables . aracteristics of a commu-nity for whom he cherishes a proper respect and a naturalregard. He trusts not to be considered as unpardonablyoffendrng, by laying out a street that infringes upon no-bodys private rights, and appropriating a lot of land rm PEEFACE. which had no visible owner, and building a house, of ma-terials long in use for constructing castles in the air. Thepersonages of the tale — though they give themselves outto be of ancient stability and considerable prominence —are really of the authors own making, or, at all events,of his own mixing; their virtues can shed no lustre, northeir defects redound, in the remotest degree, to the dis-credit of the venerable town of which they profess to beinhabitants. He would be glad, therefore, if—especiallyin the quarter to which he alludes — the book may beread strictly as a Romance, having a great deal more todo with the clouds overhead than with any portion of theictual soil of the County of Essex. LiNOi, January 27, INTRODUCTORY NOTE. THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. In September of the year during the February o*which Hawthorne had completed The Scarlet Letter^he began The House of the Seven Gables. Mean-while he had removed from Salem to Lenox, in Berk«shire County, Massachusetts, where he occupied with hi»family a small red wooden house, still standing at th«date of this edition [1883] near the Stockbridge Bowl. I shant have the new story ready by November,*he explained to his publisher, on the 1st of October,** for I am never good for anything in the literary waytill after the first autumnal frost, which has somewhatsuch an effect on my imagination that it does on thefoliage here about me — multiplying and brighteningits hues. But by vigorous application he was able tocomplete the new work about the middle of the Januaryfollowing. Since research has disclosed the manner in which theromance is interwoven with incidents from the historyof the Hawthorne family
Size: 2086px × 1198px
Photo credit: © The Reading Room / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1890, bookidhouseofseven, bookyear1894
