Why We Should Be Teaching and Writing about The Literary World’s 1850 “Hawthorne and His Mosses”

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.