The House of the Seven Gables
By: by Nathaniel Hawthorne ; edited with an introduction by Milton R. Stern.
Contributors: Stern, Milton R.
Series: The Penguin American library
Publisher: Penguin
Published: 1981
Place of publication: Harmondsworth, Middlesex; New York, N.Y
Language: eng
Number of pages: 326
Subjects: Haunted houses -- Fiction.; Salem (Mass.) -- Fiction.
Description: This enduring novel of crime and retribution vividly reflects the social and moral values of New England in the 1840s. Nathaniel Hawthorne's gripping psychological drama concerns the Pyncheon family, a dynasty founded on pious theft, who live for generations under a dead man's curse until their house is finally exorcised by love. Hawthorne, by birth and education, was instilled with the Puritan belief in America's limitless promise. Yet -- in part because of blemishes on his own family history -- he also saw the darker side of the young nation. Like his twentieth-century heirs William Faulkner and F. Scott Fitzgerald, Hawthorne peered behind propriety's façade and exposed the true human condition. -- Back cover.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references.