NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE IN HIS TIMES

Winner of the 1983 National Book Award, James R. Mellow's magisterial biography of Nathaniel Hawthorne places America's first great writer in the midst of the literary and cultural turmoil of the early republic. An unparalleled panorama of 19th-century American intellectual life, the biography convincingly traces Hawthorne's literary concerns to the events of his enigmatic life.