Twice-Told Tales.

Boston: American Stationers Co.,, 1837. May we live to hear them told a hundred times" - Edgar Allan Poe First edition of the author's second book, his first short story collection, and one of the greatest collections of short fiction in American literature. Twice-Told Tales is the first book Hawthorne published under his own name: his short stories had previously been published in periodicals anonymously, as had his first novel, Fanshawe, but in 1837 his "status as 'the obscurest man of letters in America' ended when Twice-Told Tales was published with his name on the cover... The eighteen tales Hawthorne selected from the dozens already in print were clearly calculated to display his range and to win literary recognition. Genial sketches of everyday life, such as 'Little Annie's Ramble' and the even more popular 'A Rill from the Town-Pump', appealed especially to his women readers, as did the celebration of marital love that Longfellow liked best, 'The Great Carbuncle'. But Hawthorne also included speculative sketches such as 'Wakefield' and disturbing stories about the Puritan past such as 'The Minister's Black Veil' and 'The Gentle Boy'. Readers who had admired those stories before now learned Hawthorne's name, and he could anticipate widening his readership and opening 'an intercourse with the world'" (ANB). The book also resulted in Hawthorne's introduction to his future wife, Sophia Peabody, who he would marry five years later. The book was reviewed positively on publication, including by Hawthorne's friend, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and by Edgar Allan Poe, who wrote that he had "seen no prose composition by any American which can compare with some of these articles... The style of Mr. Hawthorne is purity itself. His tone is singularly effective - wild, plaintive, thoughtful, and in full accordance with his themes... We look upon him as one of the few men of indisputable genius to whom our country has as yet given birth" (Graham's Magazine). This copy is from the library of the distinguished book collector Carrie Estelle Doheny (1875-1958), with her morocco book label on the front pastedown. Doheny's library in Camarillo, California "represented one of the rarest book libraries in the United States. Within the collection, 4,000 volumes were rare books and first editions" (Bakken & Farrington, p. 97). Octavo. Original red-brown ribbed cloth, spine lettered and ruled in gilt, 16 pp. publisher's catalogue at rear. Housed in custom quarter red morocco slipcase and chemise. Spine lightly worn at foot, cloth sunned and marked, contents foxed, a couple of gatherings slightly proud. A very good copy. BAL 7581; Clarke A2.1; Wilson 129. Gordon Morris Bakken and Brenda Farrington, eds, Encyclopedia of Women in the American West, 2003.