Hawthornes Young Goodman Brown and its Author Essay -- Young Goodman

Initially, of course, Nathaniel Hawthornes literary works went unranked among those of other American and British writers. But his reputation grew gradually even among contemporary critics, until he was accepted as a man of genius. Edgar Allen Poe, in a review of Hawthornes Young Goodman Brown, which had been written 12 years prior, said in Godeys Ladys Book, November, 1847, no. 35, pp. 252-6 It was never the fashion (until lately) to speak of him in any summary of our best authors. . . . The peculiarity or sameness, or monotone of Hawthorne, would, in its mere character of peculiarity, and without reference to what is the peculiarity, dish to deprive him of all chance of popular appreciation. But at his failure to be appreciated, we can, of course, no longer wonder, when we find him monotonous at decidedly the whip of all possible points--at that point which, having the least concern with Nature, is the farthest removed from the popular intellect, from the popular sentiment and from the popular taste. I allude to the strain of parable which completely overwhelms the greater number of his subjects. So literary critic Edgar Allan Poe thinks that Hawthornes heavy reliance on allegory is the cause of his lack of popularity during the 1830s and 40s. In 1848 James Russell Lowell wrote a piece of poetry entitled Hawthorne for the periodical A Fable for Critics There is Hawthorne, with genius so shrinking and rare That you barely at first see the strength that is there A frame so robust, with a nature so sweeet, So earnest, so graceful, so slight and so fleet, Is worth a descent from Olympus to meet Tis as if a rough oak that for ages ha... ..... Yesterdays With Authors. 1871. http//eldred.ne.mediaone.net/nh/ywa3.html Hawthorne and His Mosses. The Norton Anthology American Literature, edited by Baym et al. New York W.W. Norton and Co., 1995. Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The Complete brusque Stories of Nathaniel Hawthorne. New York Doubleday and Co., Inc.,19 59. James, Henry. Hawthorne. Ithaca, NY Cornell University Press, 1997. James, Henry. Nathaniel Hawthorne, Nation, March 14, 1872. http//eldred.ne.mediaone.net/nh/hjnat.html Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth. Hawthorne- 1804-1864. 1864. http//eldred.ne.mediaone.net/nh/nhlong.html Lowell, James Russell. Hawthorne. In A Fable For Critics. 1848. http//eldred.ne.mediaone.net/nh/fable.html Melville, Herman. Hawthorne and His Mosses, The Literary World August 17, 24, 1850.