ISBN: 9781154163063

This historic book may have numerous typos, missing text or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1885. Not illustrat… More...

This historic book may have numerous typos, missing text or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1885. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... CURRENT LITERATURE. BIOGRAPHY. X TA THANIEL Hawthorne and His Wife James iV R. Osgood & Co..--It is not often that a son makes a good biographer of a father, for the simple reason that his judgment as to his parent must be more or less warped by his affection. Yet probably in other respects none is better fitted for the task, as nowhere but at home can a father be truly known and understood. Mr. Julian Hawthorne has proved his capacity for the difficult task--to him, of course, a labor of love, all the easier in that the family cupboard contained no skeleton, nor the records of Nathaniel Hawthorne''s singularly pure and blameless life anything to hide. All, therefore, that his son had to do was to exercise his discretion as to what should and what should not be published. What good taste would exclude he has excluded, and what common sense pointed out as likely, not only to interest the public, but also to show the world a typical man and wife, and, by consequence, a typical household, he has faithfully chronicled. This the author effects by allowing the subjects of the biography and their friends to speak for themselves without undue reticence, and at the same time without undue garrulousness. Mr. Julian Hawthorne''s comments are few and short, serving rather as connecting links between the component parts than as dissertations on the virtues of those whose lives he is setting out before the public gaze. He delivers a plain, unvarnished tale, the simple record of two lives whose true love for each other and mutual married happiness stand in no need of vindication. Of Mr. Hawthorne as an author he says little or nothing. He has no need. His father''s works have been the property of the whole English-speaking race for well-nigh half a century. The verdict passed by ... Henry Mason Baum, Books, Fiction and Literature, The Church Review (Volume 46) Books>Fiction and Literature, General Books LLC<