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Why We Should Be Teaching and Writing about The Literary World’s 1850 “Hawthorne and His Mosses”
- J19: The Journal of Nineteenth-Century Americanists
- University of Pennsylvania Press
- Volume 5, Number 1, Spring 2017
- pp. 179-189
- 10.1353/jnc.2017.0009
- Article
- Additional Information
Melville published “Hawthorne and His Mosses” in August 1850 issues of New York’s Literary World. The “standard” version of the essay, however, developed by editors of the Northwestern-Newberry edition of Melville and currently used in most anthologies, closely follows a manuscript version before Melville edited the essay in order to tone down its boisterous nationalism. The version that Melville published in 1850 offers a more sophisticated perspective on American literary nationalism, and it is that version, rather than the Northwestern-Newberry text, that most likely captures Melville’s final intentions. Melville’s published version also best speaks to our current interest in transnational and hemispheric American studies.