Nathaniel Hawthorne's 19th-century Gothic fiction follows the Pyncheon family, haunted by generations of guilt and secrets surrounding their ancestral Salem home. Dark family history collides with hopes for redemption as descendants grapple with a curse that has shadowed their lineage for centuries.
Halfway down a by-street of one of our New England towns stands a rusty wooden house, with seven acutely peaked gables, facing towards various points of the compass, and a huge, clustered chimney in the midst. The street is Pyncheon Street; the house is the old Pyncheon House; and an elm-tree, of wide circumference, rooted before the door, is familiar to every town-born child by the title of the Pyncheon Elm. On my occasional visits to the town aforesaid, I seldom failed to turn down Pyncheon Street, for the sake of passing through the shadow of these two antiquities,—the great elm-tree and the weather-beaten edifice. The aspect of the venerable mansion has always affected me like a human countenance, bearing the traces not merely of outward storm and sunshine, but expressive also, of the long lapse of mortal life, and accompanying vicissitudes that have passed within. Were these to be w…Continue reading →
An American author who lived from 1804 to 1864, this master of dark romanticism explored the psychological depths of Puritan New England through haunting tales of guilt, sin, and moral complexity. His masterpiece The Scarlet Letter and stories like "Young Goodman Brown" established him as a foundational voice in American literature. All works by Nathaniel Hawthorne →
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