The House of the Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne 1961 Paperback Book CT621 Signet Classics
 
Classic Literature in Excellent Condition
 
To plant a family! This idea is at the bottom of most of the wrong and mischief which men do. The truth is, that, once in every half-century, at longest, a family should be merged into the great, obscure mass of humanity, and forget all about its ancestors.

Living in a mansion known for its unique roof of seven gables, Hepzibah Pyncheon finds herself destitute and in desperate need to make ends meet. To further her struggle, she is now in care of her brother who had just been released after a thirty-year prison sentence for murder. But there is more to the Pyncheon ancestry that involves the history of the mansion. A Pyncheon ancestor had accused a man named Matthew Maule of witchcraft solely so that the Pyncheon family could seize this man's land. Maule, before being hanged and his property wrongfully seized by the Pyncheon family, cursed the ground on which the mansion with the seven gables would be built. Murder, vindication, and even the supernatural unfold under the renowned seven gabled roof of this mysterious New England mansion.
 
About the Author
Nathaniel Hawthorne was born on July 4, 1804, in Salem, Massachusetts, the son and grandson of proud New England seafarers. He lived in genteel poverty with his widowed mother and two young sisters in a house filled with Puritan ideals and family pride in a prosperous past. His boyhood was, in most respects, pleasant and normal. In 1825 he was graduated from Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Maine, and he returned to Salem determined to become a writer of short stories. For the next twelve years he was plagued with unhappiness and self-doubts as he struggled to master his craft. He finally secured some small measure of success with the publication of his Twice-Told Tales (1837). His marriage to Sophia Peabody in 1842 was a happy one. The Scarlet Letter (1850), which brought him immediate recognition, was followed by The House of the Seven Gables (1851). After serving four years as the American Consul in Liverpool, England, he traveled in Italy; he returned home to Massachusetts in 1860. Depressed, weary of writing, and failing in health, he died on May 19, 1864, at Plymouth, New Hampshire.
Brenda Wineapple authored Sister Brother: Gertrude and Leo Stein and Genet: A Biography of Janet Flanner and is currently at work on a biography of Nathaniel Hawthorne.  She is Washington Irving Professor of Modern Literary and Historical Studies at Union College and has appeared on C-Span’s American Writers series.
 
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