The House of the Seven Gables
A family returns to an old house in Salem and finds that the past is still being litigated. Hawthorne called the book a romance rather than a novel, and the distinction matters: the plot depends on a curse, a hidden deed and a death that may have been caused by something other than natural means.
It is slower than The Scarlet Letter and more concerned with inheritance than with sin. The portrait of Hepzibah, an impoverished gentlewoman opening a shop, is one of Hawthorne's best pieces of social observation. Read it for the house itself, which is the real protagonist.
Public-domain status
First published in 1851. In the United States, works published before 1930 are in the public domain. In the European Union the general term is the life of the author plus 70 years; Nathaniel Hawthorne died in 1864, so this work has been free to republish there since 1935.
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Keep reading
- Frankenstein — Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, 1818
- The Picture of Dorian Gray — Oscar Wilde, 1890
- Dracula — Bram Stoker, 1897
- Wuthering Heights — Emily Brontë, 1847
- Salem — the city behind the books
- Reading lists — 19 ways through the collection
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