The House of Seven Gables: A Romance.

HAWTHORNE, Nathaniel.

Item Number: 118271

London: Geo. Routledge and Co, 1852.

Finely bound example of Hawthorne’s tale of an early 19th-century household “solitary, declining, haunted by an ancestral curse.” Octavo, finely bound in full crushed crimson levant morocco by Bayntun-Riviere with morocco spine labels lettered in gilt, elaborate gilt tooling to the spine in six compartments within raised gilt bands, double gilt ruling to the panels with gilt turn-ins and inner dentelles, marbled endpapers, all edges gilt. In fine condition. A beautiful example.

“The House of the Seven Gables was an extended description of such houses and households as [Hawthorne] had dealt with in many of his sketches. This house was described from an actual house in Salem, and this household was in some respects like the household of Hawthorne’s own youth— withdrawn, solitary, declining, haunted by an ancestral curse… With The House of the Seven Gables Hawthorne said farewell to the Salem in which he had grown up” (DAB).