In sketches, tales, and romances published in the second third of the nineteenth century, Nathaniel Hawthorne chose mainly American materials, drawing especially on the history of colonial New England and his native Salem in the time of his early American ancestors. Heir to the Puritan tradition and alert to the transcendental thought prominent in his region and time, he subjected both to his skeptical, questioning scrutiny in the moral and psychological probing that is characteristic of his fictional works. Considering guiltactual or imagined, revealed or concealed-to be a universal human experience, he traced out in his characters the types and the effects of guilt. The seriousness of his literary purpose, his inde pendence of mind, and his intellectual and artistic integrity were recognized by Herman Melville and others of his contemporaries. He placed a number of characters and scenes among the most memorable in world literature; he was master of a prose style that is individual, simple and direct, and yet richly varied.
