The House of the Seven Gables, a Romance
Boston: Ticknor, Reed, and Fields, 1851. First edition. Original cloth over boards. Duodecimo. 344 pages. Bound in brown cloth over boards with gilt-stamped spine titles, blind-stamped rules and ornamentation to boards, yellow endpapers. Shallow extremity rubs and wear. Chipping to spine ends. Hinges sound. Very good overall.
Hawthorne's masterful novel of a New England family's ancestral guilt and atonement tinged with supernatural retribution. The setting is the 1668 Turner-Ingersoll Mansion in Salem, Massachusetts, once owned by Hawthorne's relatives.
"The House of the Seven Gables" influenced the likes of H. P. Lovecraft, who called it "New England's greatest contribution to weird literature."
Published April 9, 1851, and the books released that day were from two printings in March, 1851. BAL didn't find variations in the text sufficient to distinguish and prioritize one printing from another, and therefore used binding variations. This copy is BAL binding A (earliest). Clark did identify some typographical differences and prioritized them into five printings. This copy has no battered type on page 149 and has the typographical features on pages 50, 278, 58, and 57k that conform with the March second printing according to Clark. There is a four page publisher catalogue dated March, 1851 tipped in at front endpaper.
Ref. BAL 7604; CLARK A17.1.b.
Item #1160
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