Hawthorne was a Transcendentalists believing in the "inherent goodness of both people and nature." You could think of him as a hippie of the early 19th century. Hawthorne was a founding member of Brook Farm, a utopian experiment in communal living -- though he is not portrayed as a deep believer in its ideals. Indeed, as he grew older, he migrated from a young Transcendental idealist to a Dark Romantic writer. The older man comes to embrace the opposite inclinations of his youth; that, rather than being inherently good, people were deeply fallible, prone to lapses in judgement and drifted easily to sin. Enjoy!
This week’s story is “A Jury of Her Peers” by Susan Glaspell. Glaspell co-founded the first modern American theater company, the Provincetown Players, and...
This story is “Roger Malvin’s Burial by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Much of Hawthorne’s work belongs to the sub-genre of Dark Romanticism, distinguished by an emphasis...
Dick was an under-rated master of Science Fiction, in which he gravitated to writing dystopian stories. His cautionary tales, often featuring witty and gothic...