Hawthorne

Building on one of the topics prominent in the celebration in 2004 of the bicentennial of Hawthorne’s birth, the year saw continued interest in the influential women associated with him, with the appearance of Elizabeth Manning Hawthorne: A Life in Letters and the collection Reinventing the Peabody Sisters. Engaging and important essays or parts of books on Hawthorne were contributed by Wanda Faye Jones, Betsy Klimasmith, Richard Kopley, Andrew Loman, Richard E. Meyer, Robert Milder, Deak Nabers, Arthur Riss, and Milette Shamir.

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Hawthorne’s older sister is the subject of Elizabeth Manning Hawthorne: A Life in Letters, ed. Cecile Anne de Rocher (Alabama). Although known principally as an analog for Hester Prynne, Elizabeth is a worthy subject in her own right, particularly as an epistolary chronicler of 19th-century America who captures “happenings in Salem, in New England, in the nation, and on the international scene.” Working from 288 extant letters written between 1814 and 1882, de Rocher has chosen 118, the majority addressed to members of the Hawthorne and Manning families, that place Elizabeth in various contexts: family, community, region, nation, and the international scene. She includes one of three extant letters to Nathaniel (dated May 3, 1851), “to showcase Elizabeth’s writing ability, biography, and relationship to Nathaniel,” and six letters to James T. Fields, to illustrate “the degree and importance of Elizabeth’s contribution to the biographical corpus on her brother.” Notable and engaging topics include her reactions to many of Nathaniel’s writings, her criticisms of Sophia Hawthorne, and her Thoreauvean orientation and response to nature. This rich collection is supported by a family chronology, tables of both familial and nonfamilial referents, a list of repositories of the material, de Rocher’s preface and introductory essay, and a postscript that epitomizes Elizabeth as a “striking, intelligent, highly literate woman” whose collected correspondence offers an important and enduring legacy. De Rocher’s helpful introduction lays out the two families’ relationship in detail, noting that although Elizabeth’s letters may have initially been saved because of her famous brother, there is an absence of Nathaniel in most of the letters that gives these works independent value: “The quality and richness of her writing also free her from the bonds of the much-researched, possibly dysfunctional family that could not in itself make her an important writer.” De Rocher also discusses Elizabeth and Nathaniel’s collaboration on the serial American Magazine of Useful and Entertaining Knowledge and the children’s textbook Peter Parley’s Universal History on the Basis of Geography. In all, the collection provides a fascinating and worthwhile contribution to a better understanding both of the context of Nathaniel’s family and of the accomplishments and progress of Elizabeth Manning Hawthorne the writer.

The impressive collection Reinventing the Peabody Sisters is an important addition to Hawthorne scholarship. The book reenvisions the significance of Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, Mary Tyler Peabody Mann, and Sophia Amelia Peabody Hawthorne, moving them out of the shadows of notable literary men—and heretofore broad idealization or vilification—and into the light of their serious and complex engagements with Transcendentalism, reform efforts, perceptions and roles of women, African Americans, Native Americans, and Americans abroad. The collection, introduced by the editors, presents 14 original essays in four subsections, plus an epilogue, that take into account the sisters’ often-linked interests and productions. Section 1, “Conversations, Dialectic Discourse, and Self-Representations,” includes Marta Werner and Nicholas Lawrence’s “This Is His—This Is My Mystery: The Common Journal of Nathaniel and Sophia Hawthorne, 1842–1843” (pp. 3–22). Werner and Lawrence examine Sophia and Nathaniel Hawthorne’s collaboration on this joint record of their early marriage years and note Sophia’s efforts to obscure or eliminate evidence of herself in the role of editor. Charlene Avallone, “Elizabeth Palmer Peabody and the ‘Art’ of Conversation” (pp. 23–44), asserts Elizabeth’s crucial role in the evolution of the literary conversation, a practice with far-reaching cultural implications—from pedagogy to professional writing to an alternative discourse. In “Declaration and Deference: Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, Mary Peabody Mann, and the...