"THE ASPECT OF THE VENERABLE MANSION HAS ALWAYS AFFECTED ME LIKE A HUMAN COUNTENANCE"

HAWTHORNE, Nathaniel. The House of the Seven Gables, A Romance. Boston: Ticknor, Reed, and Fields, 1851. Octavo, original blind-stamped brown cloth rebacked with original spine laid down. $1800.

First edition, second printing, of this tale of an early 19th-century household, “solitary, declining, haunted by an ancestral curse,” one of 1969 copies published in April 1851, the same month as the first printing.

"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from an actual house in Salem, and this household was in some respects like the household of Hawthorne's own youth—withdrawn, solitary, declining, haunted by an ancestral curse… With The House of the Seven Gables Hawthorne said farewell to the Salem in which he had grown up" (DAB). Second printing, with all typographical points called for in Clark, including dropped type on pages 50 and 278. With publisher's name gilt-stamped on spine in BAL binding B, and BAL advertising catalogue B, dated March 1851, bound between front endpapers. Clark A17.1.b. BAL 7604.

Text with occasional faint dampstaining, mild soiling; original cloth skillfully rebacked with original spine laid down and new endpapers. A very good copy of this classic Hawthorne novel.