Boston
Nathaniel Hawthorne set The Scarlet Letter in seventeenth-century Boston, and Henry David Thoreau's Walden was written about a pond a short distance outside it. The two books describe opposite ideas of a good life, from within the same small region and the same mid-century decades.
Boston Public Library was the first large free municipal library in the United States, and its research collections cover the printing and reform movements that surrounded those writers. Its online catalogue is open to readers anywhere.
A library to check
- Boston Public Library — catalogues and digital collections, open to readers online
Books connected to Boston
- Walden — Henry David Thoreau, 1854. Part account book, part experiment in attention, still argued with 170 years later.
- The Scarlet Letter — Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1850. A compact American classic about the difference between a rule and its consequences.
- The Rise of Silas Lapham — William Dean Howells, 1885. The best American novel about business ethics, and a portrait of Boston looking down on new money.
- The Bostonians — Henry James, 1886. James on American reform movements, written with the cold eye he usually reserved for Europe.
A note on accuracy
We describe literary connections and public collections, not street addresses, opening hours or ticket prices. Those change and we cannot verify them for every reader. Follow the institution's own site for current visiting information.