What do you think?
Rate this book
Selected Short Stories of Nathaniel Hawthorn
From the author who gave us THE SCARLET LETTER and THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES, here is a comprehensive selection of his best short stories, including:
Endicott and the Red Cross
Young Goodman Brown
Earth's Holocaust
Ethan Brand
My Kinsman, Major Molineux
And more!
Endicott and the Red Cross
Young Goodman Brown
Earth's Holocaust
Ethan Brand
My Kinsman, Major Molineux
And more!
Hardcover
First published January 1, 1966
About the author
Nathaniel Hawthorne
5,506 books3,620 followersNathaniel Hawthorne was a 19th century American novelist and short story writer. He is seen as a key figure in the development of American literature for his tales of the nation's colonial history.
Shortly after graduating from Bowdoin College, Hathorne changed his name to Hawthorne. Hawthorne anonymously published his first work, a novel titled Fanshawe, in 1828. In 1837, he published Twice-Told Tales and became engaged to painter and illustrator Sophia Peabody the next year. He worked at a Custom House and joined a Transcendentalist Utopian community, before marrying Peabody in 1842. The couple moved to The Old Manse in Concord, Massachusetts, later moving to Salem, the Berkshires, then to The Wayside in Concord. The Scarlet Letter was published in 1850, followed by a succession of other novels. A political appointment took Hawthorne and family to Europe before returning to The Wayside in 1860. Hawthorne died on May 19, 1864, leaving behind his wife and their three children.
Much of Hawthorne's writing centers around New England and many feature moral allegories with a Puritan inspiration. His work is considered part of the Romantic movement and includes novels, short stories, and a biography of his friend, the United States President Franklin Pierce.
Shortly after graduating from Bowdoin College, Hathorne changed his name to Hawthorne. Hawthorne anonymously published his first work, a novel titled Fanshawe, in 1828. In 1837, he published Twice-Told Tales and became engaged to painter and illustrator Sophia Peabody the next year. He worked at a Custom House and joined a Transcendentalist Utopian community, before marrying Peabody in 1842. The couple moved to The Old Manse in Concord, Massachusetts, later moving to Salem, the Berkshires, then to The Wayside in Concord. The Scarlet Letter was published in 1850, followed by a succession of other novels. A political appointment took Hawthorne and family to Europe before returning to The Wayside in 1860. Hawthorne died on May 19, 1864, leaving behind his wife and their three children.
Much of Hawthorne's writing centers around New England and many feature moral allegories with a Puritan inspiration. His work is considered part of the Romantic movement and includes novels, short stories, and a biography of his friend, the United States President Franklin Pierce.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
August 17, 2025
#Binge Reviewing my previous Reads
I first encountered Selected Short Stories of Nathaniel Hawthorne in 2001, when I was still young enough to believe that literature was a kind of enchanted forest—dark, forbidding, but thrilling to enter. Hawthorne’s tales struck me then as eerie fables carved out of old Puritan wood, the kind of stories that smelt of candlewax and centuries-old guilt.
Young Goodman Brown terrified me, not because of the devil in the woods but because of the suggestion that the devil might be within us all.
At that stage of life, my reading was naïve, raw. I took allegory at face value and saw Hawthorne’s characters as grotesque warnings, carved gargoyles peering down at me from the towers of American literature. It was my initiation, and the stories clung to me like whispers after a campfire.
By 2012, when I returned to the anthology, I had accumulated more life, more books, and more skepticism. The Hawthorne I met this time was less a gothic storyteller and more a moral psychologist. I found myself caught by The Minister’s Black Veil—not as a spooky tale of a clergyman’s eccentricity, but as a profound parable about secrecy, shame, and the masks we wear.
The young reader of 2001 would have trembled at the veil itself; the older reader of 2012 thought about how we craft our own veils, the hidden lives behind professions, friendships, and even marriages. Hawthorne was no longer merely old New England darkness—he was a craftsman of moral ambiguity, and I felt both admiration and unease in his company.
In 2019, I picked it up again, and the stories had shifted yet once more. The intervening years had added a sharper awareness of history and politics. This time I read Hawthorne not just as a personal moralist but as an ambivalent witness to America’s national psyche. My Kinsman, Major Molineux stood out with particular force: a tale of rebellion, mob violence, and the collapse of authority.
Reading it in a world shaken by populism, nationalism, and street protests, I felt its warning about how quickly crowds can shift from festive to feral. The earlier Gothic eeriness and the midlife moral fables now widened into something larger: a diagnosis of America itself. Hawthorne, haunted by Puritan shadows, seemed to be speaking about how nations never quite free themselves from their earliest sins.
By 2019, I was reading him as history’s reluctant prophet.
And now, in 2025, opening the anthology again, the voices sound different still. The old allegories remain, but I no longer read them only as moral puzzles or political foreshadowings. Now they feel like meditations on human persistence—how we recycle the same struggles in new costumes.
The Birth-Mark, for instance, feels suddenly contemporary, speaking less about a scientist’s obsession with perfection than about our age of cosmetic surgery, digital filters, and relentless self-curation. Aylmer’s fatal quest to “fix” beauty echoes in Instagram feeds and biotech ambitions. Hawthorne, it turns out, didn’t write merely for Puritans or for nineteenth-century readers; he wrote for us, still restless under new veils, still seduced by new experiments, still stumbling into woods we don’t understand.
Tracing my readings across these years, I realise that Hawthorne has been less a static author than a kind of literary companion, one whose meanings grow or mutate as I do.
In 2001 he gave me fear and mystery; in 2012 he offered moral complexity; in 2019 he revealed historical unease; and today he presses me to think about our contemporary obsessions.
To reread him is to reread myself, to see how the shadows of youth stretch into adulthood and beyond.
The anthology itself has become a kind of mirror—haunted, yes, but also generous—reflecting not just the inner world of Hawthorne’s America, but the evolving landscape of my own life.
I first encountered Selected Short Stories of Nathaniel Hawthorne in 2001, when I was still young enough to believe that literature was a kind of enchanted forest—dark, forbidding, but thrilling to enter. Hawthorne’s tales struck me then as eerie fables carved out of old Puritan wood, the kind of stories that smelt of candlewax and centuries-old guilt.
Young Goodman Brown terrified me, not because of the devil in the woods but because of the suggestion that the devil might be within us all.
At that stage of life, my reading was naïve, raw. I took allegory at face value and saw Hawthorne’s characters as grotesque warnings, carved gargoyles peering down at me from the towers of American literature. It was my initiation, and the stories clung to me like whispers after a campfire.
By 2012, when I returned to the anthology, I had accumulated more life, more books, and more skepticism. The Hawthorne I met this time was less a gothic storyteller and more a moral psychologist. I found myself caught by The Minister’s Black Veil—not as a spooky tale of a clergyman’s eccentricity, but as a profound parable about secrecy, shame, and the masks we wear.
The young reader of 2001 would have trembled at the veil itself; the older reader of 2012 thought about how we craft our own veils, the hidden lives behind professions, friendships, and even marriages. Hawthorne was no longer merely old New England darkness—he was a craftsman of moral ambiguity, and I felt both admiration and unease in his company.
In 2019, I picked it up again, and the stories had shifted yet once more. The intervening years had added a sharper awareness of history and politics. This time I read Hawthorne not just as a personal moralist but as an ambivalent witness to America’s national psyche. My Kinsman, Major Molineux stood out with particular force: a tale of rebellion, mob violence, and the collapse of authority.
Reading it in a world shaken by populism, nationalism, and street protests, I felt its warning about how quickly crowds can shift from festive to feral. The earlier Gothic eeriness and the midlife moral fables now widened into something larger: a diagnosis of America itself. Hawthorne, haunted by Puritan shadows, seemed to be speaking about how nations never quite free themselves from their earliest sins.
By 2019, I was reading him as history’s reluctant prophet.
And now, in 2025, opening the anthology again, the voices sound different still. The old allegories remain, but I no longer read them only as moral puzzles or political foreshadowings. Now they feel like meditations on human persistence—how we recycle the same struggles in new costumes.
The Birth-Mark, for instance, feels suddenly contemporary, speaking less about a scientist’s obsession with perfection than about our age of cosmetic surgery, digital filters, and relentless self-curation. Aylmer’s fatal quest to “fix” beauty echoes in Instagram feeds and biotech ambitions. Hawthorne, it turns out, didn’t write merely for Puritans or for nineteenth-century readers; he wrote for us, still restless under new veils, still seduced by new experiments, still stumbling into woods we don’t understand.
Tracing my readings across these years, I realise that Hawthorne has been less a static author than a kind of literary companion, one whose meanings grow or mutate as I do.
In 2001 he gave me fear and mystery; in 2012 he offered moral complexity; in 2019 he revealed historical unease; and today he presses me to think about our contemporary obsessions.
To reread him is to reread myself, to see how the shadows of youth stretch into adulthood and beyond.
The anthology itself has become a kind of mirror—haunted, yes, but also generous—reflecting not just the inner world of Hawthorne’s America, but the evolving landscape of my own life.
August 15, 2015
So, this book was required reading for me back in my wacky college-phase; do not let that admission deter from this review. Although, I had read this many years back, I can tell you what stuck with me, and serves as testament to the genius of this collection; Hawthorne perfectly captures the human condition. He poignantly shines a spot-light on all the things that make us beautiful and horrible, artfully turning that magnifying glass in on the reader and shamelessly leaves you to draw your own conclusions. In my opinion, you can cheerfully disregard his longer, more well-known stories; his short stories are where your eyes should be focused.
June 6, 2013
Donna Overly forced this collection into my hands because I had made the comment that "Hawthorne is so fun to read in short spurts". I wasn't excited to pick up another collection of his, but seeing that half of the short stories were already read in Classics Book club, I decided to read the rest. I think I have found my favorite short story of, possibly, all time. "Feathertop" is magnificent and should be read by everyone!! Loved this tale and its moral at the end. I kept chuckling while I read it at the pool.
January 20, 2026
We read four of these stories in high school, and I didn’t remember much about them. I was pleasantly surprised, and enjoyed most of the stories, although reading one after the other got a bit much by the end.
December 7, 2021
I try to read this, but after four stories, this is boring and everything Finnish abruptly.
May 17, 2018
With engaging writing, going through the supernatural and gothic world, Hawthorne is one of the exponents of this style in the early half of the 18th century, influencing many other writers who came after him.
Young Master Brown, for example, how many movie scenes we see were possibly inspired by this tale written in 1835, in which the protagonist seeing the most ordinary people in society: from pastors and priests to politicians to merchants, from acquaintances to unknown pedestrians of a city - watches them closely and realizes that they are devils or faithful of a satanic cult. I remember for example, The Devil's Advocate, or a TV adaptation of an episode of Grimm.
In this tale, the characters' names are related to the symbolic, a direct metaphor of the story itself, as in American Gods, by Neil Gaiman. Here we find a woman named Faith and the protagonist Goodman.
From the dark and mysterious adventure of a satanic cult, without the certainty of that if it is a dream or reality, and the participation in it of a kind of secret society with the most unlikely members, the author points to two profound reflections: the greater evil would be that which dwells within people? And guilt and obsession could intoxicate an individual's mind in a radical way until death?
Young Master Brown, for example, how many movie scenes we see were possibly inspired by this tale written in 1835, in which the protagonist seeing the most ordinary people in society: from pastors and priests to politicians to merchants, from acquaintances to unknown pedestrians of a city - watches them closely and realizes that they are devils or faithful of a satanic cult. I remember for example, The Devil's Advocate, or a TV adaptation of an episode of Grimm.
In this tale, the characters' names are related to the symbolic, a direct metaphor of the story itself, as in American Gods, by Neil Gaiman. Here we find a woman named Faith and the protagonist Goodman.
From the dark and mysterious adventure of a satanic cult, without the certainty of that if it is a dream or reality, and the participation in it of a kind of secret society with the most unlikely members, the author points to two profound reflections: the greater evil would be that which dwells within people? And guilt and obsession could intoxicate an individual's mind in a radical way until death?
May 28, 2022
"Has it not consumed everything? Has it not swallowed up or melted down every human or divine appendage of our mortal state that had substance enough to be acted on by fire?"
"You will find among the ashes everything really valuable that you have seen cast into the flames. . . . Not a truth is destroyed nor buried so deep among the ashes but it will be raked up at last."
In high school or college, I had read four of the fifteen stories here, but it was rewarding to revisit them. Favorites overall were . . .
"Wakefield"
"Dr. Heidegger's Experiment"
"The Birthmark"
"Young Goodman Brown"
"Rappacini's Daughter"
"Earth's Holocaust"
"Ethan Brand"
October 3, 2025
Sampling of some of Hawthorne's best and most popular stories
Reading these stories in succession, I sense the similarities with his contemporaries Edgar Allan Poe and Nicolai Gogol, as well as his influence on 20th century short story masters such as Ray Bradbury.
Reading these stories in succession, I sense the similarities with his contemporaries Edgar Allan Poe and Nicolai Gogol, as well as his influence on 20th century short story masters such as Ray Bradbury.
July 19, 2017
A collection of nine short stories by one of my favorite American authors.
March 18, 2021
Some of these stories are good, and some very good. I enjoyed this visit into the past.
March 31, 2026
Read stories recommended by Teaching Company lectures.
July 21, 2010
You ever get that "mmm I just gotta get me some ol' American Romanticism" vibe? Me neither. However, if you're looking for it, this is the way to go. The man is a master, even in the short stories, though of course The Scarlet Letter is tops on his You Must Read This list.
Powerful, interesting stuff from a dude who was born, almost literally, in the shadow of the New England Puritans.
Powerful, interesting stuff from a dude who was born, almost literally, in the shadow of the New England Puritans.
May 11, 2016
A collection of 9 short stories written with wit, humor and some with shades of creepy horror.
1. The Ambitious Guest
2. The Antique Ring
3. The Artist of the Beautiful
4. A Bells's Biography
5. Beneath an Umbrella
6. The Birthmark
7. The Minister's Black Veil
8. Young Goodman Brown
9. Feathertop: A Moralized Legend
1. The Ambitious Guest
2. The Antique Ring
3. The Artist of the Beautiful
4. A Bells's Biography
5. Beneath an Umbrella
6. The Birthmark
7. The Minister's Black Veil
8. Young Goodman Brown
9. Feathertop: A Moralized Legend
Want to Read
January 1, 2008I don't have this book but I'm gonna look through all my collections for some Hawthorne short stories.
August 7, 2008
A must have collection for any American Lit. buff.
July 16, 2014
Not too into classics but there were some stories I sort of liked in here... Ant think of any at the moment, but there were two or three
October 31, 2014
I can only imagine what high school me thought of these and wonder why he did not read.
January 22, 2015
I read about 4 or 5 of the short stories before I lost my copy of the book. I liked the stories ok, but I didn't really get into them. If I find it, I'll read more, but I'm moving on for now.
Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews