Nathaniel Hawthorne Books in Order

Hawthorne's first novel, set at a college modeled on Bowdoin, follows shy scholar Fanshawe, spirited Ellen Langton, and a looming abduction plot. You can already see his interest in secrecy, moral testing, and brooding atmosphere.

A young man comes to the city expecting help from his powerful relative, only to walk into a night of confusion, humiliation, and political unrest. The story is funny, cruel, and strangely dreamlike.

A darkly comic story about a frustrated writer who tries to destroy an unpublishable manuscript, only for the act to unleash chaos. It is Hawthorne poking fun at authorship, pride, and the strange life of fiction.

Goodman Brown enters the forest one night and begins to suspect that evil runs through every corner of his community. It is one of Hawthorne's darkest tales about faith, hypocrisy, and the terror of losing trust.

When Reverend Hooper suddenly begins wearing a black veil over his face, his whole town turns uneasy. Hawthorne uses the simple image to explore hidden sin, fear, and the distance between people who think they know one another.

Four elderly guests drink water said to restore youth, and their brief transformation reveals how little wisdom age has taught them. It is a sharp, eerie fable about vanity, regret, and second chances.

This collection centers on Hawthorne's famous tale of restored youth and rounds it out with other stories of vanity, secrecy, and moral testing. It is a solid sampler of his shorter work.

In colonial Massachusetts, the stern John Endicott tears the English cross from a royal flag before a charged public crowd. Hawthorne turns the moment into a fierce study of rebellion, zeal, and Puritan resolve.

Hawthorne's first major collection gathers many of his essential early stories and sketches, from historical legends to moral parables. It is the best place to see his short fiction taking shape.

This collection introduces younger readers to notable historical figures through short, readable life sketches. Hawthorne keeps the tone lively and clear, making biography feel closer to storytelling than classroom recitation.

A gifted scientist becomes obsessed with removing the tiny mark on his wife's face that he sees as her one imperfection. Hawthorne turns that obsession into a chilling story about control, beauty, and the danger of idealizing perfection.

Humanity gathers for a vast bonfire meant to burn away old institutions, customs, and sins. Hawthorne's strange allegory asks whether evil can really be destroyed by reforming the world around us.

In Padua, a young student falls for Beatrice, the secluded daughter of a scientist who has filled his garden with poisonous plants. Love, science, and innocence all curdle in this haunting gothic tale.

Written around his Concord years, this collection includes some of Hawthorne's best tales, mixing village sketches, allegories, and darker stories. It is quieter than a novel but just as revealing of his world.

These stories and sketches draw on the White Mountains as a place of awe, danger, and legend. Hawthorne uses the landscape to frame ambition, fear, and the sublime.

After an unexplained catastrophe empties the world, a new man and woman wander through the remains of civilization. Hawthorne uses the premise to ask what human life looks like when society starts over.

In rigid Puritan Boston, Hester Prynne is forced to wear the scarlet A after bearing an illegitimate child. Hawthorne turns her public shame into a powerful story about guilt, hypocrisy, and moral courage.

Hawthorne retells Greek myths for young readers, turning old stories into warm, conversational adventures. It remains one of his most approachable and family-friendly books.

This volume gathers Hawthorne's child-friendly retellings of classical myths, including Midas, Pandora, Persephone, and more. They are simpler than the originals but still full of wonder.

In this sequel to his earlier myth book, Hawthorne retells Greek legends for children with a lighter touch and a relaxed storytelling frame. Adventure and moral lessons sit side by side.

Narrated by Miles Coverdale, this novel follows an idealistic farming commune whose reform dreams tangle with jealousy, secrecy, and desire. Hawthorne draws on Brook Farm to show how noble causes can still fail human hearts.

Hawthorne retells the Midas story for younger readers, following a king whose wish for endless gold becomes a curse. It is a simple, memorable lesson about greed and what really matters.

In a decaying Salem mansion shadowed by an old wrong, the Pyncheon family lives under the weight of history. This gothic romance mixes curse, inheritance, and the hope that kindness can break a long pattern of harm.

Drawn from Hawthorne's journal, this charming diary records a few weeks alone with his young son Julian and a pet rabbit. It shows the severe classic author in a warmer, funnier, more domestic light.

Hawthorne's campaign biography of his college friend Franklin Pierce presents the future president as dutiful, steady, and public-spirited. It is as revealing for Hawthorne's politics and loyalties as for Pierce himself.

In Rome, four artists and dreamers, Miriam, Hilda, Kenyon, and Donatello, are drawn into a dark moral crisis. Hawthorne blends art, innocence, guilt, and old-world atmosphere in one of his strangest novels.

Drawn from Hawthorne's years in England, these essays and sketches mix travel writing, social observation, and homesick comparison. He is attentive to buildings, class, custom, and the uneasy feeling of being both visitor and judge.

Two children build a snow girl so lovingly that she seems almost to come alive. Hawthorne turns a winter game into a tender, slightly uncanny story about imagination and loss.

This collection joins Hawthorne's satire of spiritual shortcutting with other tales of moral confusion and uneasy revelation. It is one of the better places to meet his allegorical side.

This volume gathers Hawthorne's observations from his years in England, from daily scenes to historical reflections. The notebook form lets you watch his fiction-making mind at work in real time.

This posthumous, unfinished romance centers on the grim Doctor Grimshawe and the children in his care, Ned and Elsie. Graveyards, hidden identities, and an old secret give the story its haunted, half-finished pull.

This fragment sketches an English romance built around inheritance, a vanished heir, and a bloody footprint left at an ancestral house. Even unfinished, it shows Hawthorne's fascination with family history and the past refusing to stay buried.

This unfinished late romance follows the elderly apothecary Doctor Dolliver, his great-granddaughter Pansie, and the tensions around a mysterious household. It mixes domestic warmth with secrets, greed, and Hawthorne's usual moral haze.

Hawthorne's journals from the United States collect sketches, story seeds, landscapes, and overheard details that later fed his fiction. They are a rich backstage look at how he turned ordinary scenes into unsettling art.

A broad omnibus bringing together Hawthorne's major novels with a representative handful of shorter fiction. It is a convenient one-volume introduction to his range.

This selection gathers many of Hawthorne's strongest short works, including his darker New England tales and symbolic moral fables. It is a handy starting point if you want the essentials without a huge volume.

This curated selection balances Hawthorne's best-known stories with reflective sketches and historical pieces. It shows how easily he moved between plot-driven tale and atmospheric meditation.

An expansive collection of Hawthorne's shorter fiction, from famous classroom staples to quieter sketches. It is best for readers who want the full sweep of his imagination.

This volume gathers Hawthorne's myth retellings from A Wonder-Book for Girls and Boys and Tanglewood Tales into one place. It is ideal for readers who want the whole classical side of his work.

This volume combines Hawthorne's early collection with additional tales, giving readers a fuller look at his legends, parables, and New England unease. It works well as both sampler and core collection.

A compact introduction to Hawthorne's short fiction, built around the stories that made his reputation. Expect moral ambiguity, symbolic detail, and a lingering chill.

Hawthorne retells the story of Pandora for young readers, beginning in a bright world that curiosity helps change forever. It has the ease of a bedtime story and the sting of an old warning.

Ernest grows up beneath a mountain profile said to foretell a great man. Hawthorne makes his patient, idealistic search into a gentle fable about character, fame, and becoming what you admire.

This edition pairs Hawthorne's best-known novel with shorter pieces that echo its concerns with guilt, secrecy, and judgment. It is a useful bridge between his long and short fiction.

Hawthorne's letters to his publisher William D. Ticknor mix business, friendship, travel, and literary life. Together they offer a clear picture of how a major American writer worked behind the scenes.

These letters trace Hawthorne's long, intimate correspondence with Sophia Peabody across courtship, marriage, and family life. The volume shows a more affectionate and playful voice than many readers expect.

This anthology gathers major stories, sketches, and shorter novels or excerpts in one readable volume. It is a smart choice for readers who want the highlights without collecting separate books.

This recovered notebook gathers fragments, observations, and early materials that deepen the record of Hawthorne's creative life. It is most interesting for readers who like drafts, false starts, and the raw texture of an author's mind.

In this unfinished late romance, Septimius becomes obsessed with a recipe for the elixir of life. Hawthorne turns that quest for immortality into a moody story about ambition, knowledge, and the cost of refusing limits.

Alongside The Scarlet Letter, this edition offers additional fiction or essays that place the novel in the wider shape of Hawthorne's work. It is helpful if you want context with the classic.

A themed selection of Hawthorne's eerier stories, where guilt, secrecy, uncanny events, and New England shadows do most of the work. Good if you want his gothic side front and center.

This paired edition joins two Hawthorne tales, one about a traveler facing doom in the White Mountains, the other about pride and punishment in colonial Boston. Both show his gift for moral drama under pressure.

This volume offers a concise doorway into Hawthorne's tale-telling, bringing together some of his most enduring shorter pieces. You get the moral tension and strange atmosphere without committing to a complete collection.

These travel sketches collect Hawthorne's sharp observations of places, people, and regional life in the United States. They sit between journalism and fiction, full of local color and the moral shadows he never quite stops seeing.

Built around one of Hawthorne's finest gothic stories, this collection pairs poisonous beauty with other tales of obsession, secrecy, and moral danger. It is an especially dark sampler.

Hawthorne retells one of Hercules' labors with humor, adventure, and plenty of storytelling warmth. It is a lively children's version of a myth about strength, cunning, and impossible tasks.

A broad selection that usually mixes novel excerpts, tales, sketches, and possibly essays. It is meant to show Hawthorne as more than just the author of one famous classroom novel.

More pageant than plot, this long sketch walks through the history of a New England street and the people who shaped it. Hawthorne treats local history like a series of living scenes passing before the eye.

From the top of a church steeple, the narrator watches a town spread out below in sunlight, motion, and weather. The sketch is light on plot but rich in mood and shifting perspective.

This winter sketch moves from falling snow to children's play and the strange beauty of cold weather. Hawthorne treats the season as both familiar and faintly magical.

Several men gather for a yearly dinner to honor the one guest among them who has been the unhappiest. It is a melancholy, reflective tale about memory, sorrow, and the strange fellowship of pain.

In this retelling of Baucis and Philemon, a humble couple welcomes mysterious strangers and finds their kindness richly rewarded. Hawthorne keeps the lesson clear without losing the wonder of the myth.

Hawthorne pauses over the quiet figure of an elderly apple seller and the life suggested by his worn routine. It is a small, humane sketch about labor, age, and unnoticed dignity.

This omnibus gathers a range of Hawthorne's fiction in one place, likely mixing novels, tales, and sketches. It is a convenient bundle for readers who want plenty to browse.

This collection highlights Hawthorne's historical Boston tales alongside other early short fiction. Expect old buildings, political memory, and a lingering sense that the past is still in the room.

A calm Sunday indoors becomes an occasion for memory, observation, and gentle meditation. This is one of Hawthorne's quieter domestic sketches, more atmosphere than plot.

This edition combines Hawthorne's great haunted-house novel with additional shorter fiction that shares its interest in inheritance, guilt, and the burden of old New England.

This collection gathers Hawthorne's historical tales set in early New England, where governors, rebels, ministers, and ordinary townspeople share the stage. It is a readable doorway into his favorite historical ground.

This volume offers classic myths in a form meant for younger readers, with clear storytelling and memorable lessons. It fits well beside Hawthorne's own myth retellings for children.

This Hawthorne volume leans into his darker New England imagination, where desire, pride, and religious severity drive the conflict. Expect moral tension, gothic atmosphere, and no easy innocence.

A slim selection led by Hawthorne's chilling story of perfection gone wrong. The companion tales usually deepen the same mix of symbolism, moral pressure, and unease.

Written during Hawthorne's European years, these notebooks record museums, cities, ruins, and passing impressions in France and Italy. They show how travel broadened his eye without dulling his taste for mystery.

An elderly bride and bridegroom marry at last in a ceremony overshadowed by age, memory, and death. Hawthorne turns the event into an eerie reflection on hope that arrives too late.

A tired young traveler falls asleep by the roadside while life-changing chances pass within arm's reach. Hawthorne turns the missed encounters into a neat meditation on chance and unseen fate.

Set during the colonial crisis of 1689, this tale imagines a mysterious old Puritan stepping forward to challenge tyranny in Boston. It reads like a legend about resistance, history, and the sudden return of buried courage.

Set in a Shaker community, this tale weighs spiritual discipline against human feeling and attachment. Hawthorne is interested less in satire than in what happens when belief tries to master desire.

Framed at Hawthorne's Concord home, this piece opens a circle of mythic storytelling with an easy, conversational touch. It works as a welcoming doorway into the tales that follow.

This unfinished tale-in-a-tale begins with an old ring and opens toward legend, inheritance, and romance. Even in fragment form, it shows Hawthorne's taste for objects heavy with history.

Hawthorne retells the Persephone story for young readers, tracing loss, longing, and the bargain that binds her to the underworld. The result is gentle, sad, and easy to follow.

Hawthorne retells New England history for younger readers through stories framed around an old chair and a listening family. It is part history book, part fireside storytelling, with a strong sense of place and memory.

This lesser-known Hawthorne piece turns on temptation, appearance, and the pull of what shines at a distance. It carries his usual interest in moral choice and inward struggle.

Hawthorne turns colonial and early American history into brisk narrative for younger readers. The book highlights famous figures, conflicts, and turning points without losing the feeling of a story being told aloud.

These linked tales look back to colonial Boston and the old Province House, where rumor, politics, and ghostly memory blur together. Hawthorne uses the setting to turn local history into something almost supernatural.

Hawthorne retells Odysseus's meeting with Circe for younger readers, with transformed sailors, a dangerous enchantress, and a hero who must keep his wits. The myth stays adventurous but approachable.

This early diary offers a rare glimpse of Hawthorne before fame, with the habits, observations, and moods of a young writer in formation. It is slight but revealing.

This children's collection includes playful and gently moral tales, often centered on youthful wishes, lessons, and imagination. It shows Hawthorne in a lighter mode than the darker famous stories.

This broad collection gathers fiction with essays and short prose pieces, showing how easily Hawthorne moved between storytelling and reflection. It is useful for readers who want a fuller sense of his prose world.

Set amid Puritan persecution of Quakers, this story follows a gentle child caught in the cruelty of adults and institutions. It is one of Hawthorne's most openly sympathetic tales.

Hawthorne's Civil War essay blends travel writing, political unease, and close observation from a visit to Washington and the front. It is thoughtful, skeptical, and unusually direct for him.

This version of Hawthorne's unfinished romance follows Septimius as he pursues a secret formula for immortality. The elixir gives the story its eerie center, but the real subject is what ambition does to a soul.

This later collection pairs the tender title story with a range of Hawthorne's mature short fiction. It moves from childlike wonder to some of his darkest moral pieces.

This collection gathers short historical and biographical pieces written to interest younger readers. Hawthorne keeps the focus on vivid episodes and human character rather than dry fact lists.