“The Scarlet Letter,” which explains as much of this unique imaginative art, as is to be gathered from reading his highest single achievement, yet needs to be ranged with his other writings, early and late, to have its last effect. Even his college days at Bowdoin did not quite break through his acquired and inherited reserve but beneath it all, his faculty of divining men and women was exercised with almost uncanny prescience and subtlety. Its colours and shadows are marvelously reflected in his “Twice-Told Tales” and other short stories, the product of his first literary period. He led there a shy and rather sombre life of few artistic encouragements, yet not wholly uncongenial, his moody, intensely meditative temperament being considered. He was born at Salem, Mass., on July 4th, 1804, son of a sea-captain. Nathaniel Hawthorne was already a man of forty-six, and a tale writer of some twenty-four years’ standing, when “The Scarlet Letter” appeared.
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