A brief biographical sketch and critical analysis of the works of Nathaniel Hawthorne, one of the preeminent writers of the nineteenth-century. A key figure in the so-called American Renaissance, Hawthorne is most famous for The Scarlet Letter, a classic of American literature, as well as such other novels as The House of the Seven Gables and The Blithedale Romance, all examined in this monograph. Hawthorne was also a master of the short story form, which was just beginning to recognized at that time in the American literary canon. Henry James, the author, was himself a masterful interpreter of American life as well, coming to fame in the generation after Hawthorne. - Summary by James Hutchisson