This volume, brings together some of the representative high points of Hawthorne criticism, ranging chronologically from the 1940s to the present. The essays take a variety of critical and theoretical approaches.

On Nathaniel Hawthorne / --Biography of Nathaniel Hawthorne / -- The Paris review perspective / -- Nathaniel Hawthorne and the canon of American literature / -- Nathaniel Hawthorne's critical reception / -- The burden of secret sin: Nathaniel Hawthorne's fiction / -- Nathaniel Hawthorne and American romanticism / -- The scarlet letter / -- Chiefly about Coverdale: The Blithedale romance / -- Re-figuring revelations: Nathaniel Hawthorne's The scarlet letter / -- Hawthorne as essayist: Our old home and "Chiefly about war matters" / -- small heap of glittering fragments": Hawthorne's discontent with the short story form / -- Hawthorne and nineteenth-century perfectionism / -- Progress and providence in The house of the seven gables / -- Narrative techniques and the oral tradition in The scarlet letter / -- Hawthorne and the sublime / -- Hawthorne, the fall, and the psychology of maturity / -- Nathaniel Hawthorne and his mother: a biographical speculation / -- Agnostic tensions in Hawthorne's short stories / Bill Christopherson. On Nathaniel Hawthorne -- Biography of Nathaniel Hawthorne -- The Paris review perspective -- Nathaniel Hawthorne and the canon of American literature -- Nathaniel Hawthorne's critical reception -- The burden of secret sin: Nathaniel Hawthorne's fiction -- Nathaniel Hawthorne and American romanticism -- The scarlet letter -- Chiefly about Coverdale: The Blithedale romance -- Re-figuring revelations: Nathaniel Hawthorne's The scarlet letter -- Hawthorne as essayist: Our old home and "Chiefly about war matters" -- A ?t small heap of glittering fragments": Hawthorne's discontent with the short story form -- Hawthorne and nineteenth-century perfectionism -- Progress and providence in The house of the seven gables -- Narrative techniques and the oral tradition in The scarlet letter -- Hawthorne and the sublime -- Hawthorne, the fall, and the psychology of maturity -- Nathaniel Hawthorne and his mother: a biographical speculation -- Agnostic tensions in Hawthorne's short stories.