Nathaniel Hawthorne Essays

Nathaniel Hawthorne Essays collects two reflective pieces from his 1846 book Mosses from an Old Manse, read slowly and softly for sleep.

Hawthorne wrote these essays at the Old Manse, an old parsonage in Concord, Massachusetts, once home to Ralph Waldo Emerson. The writing is quiet and unhurried, long, careful sentences that turn small observations about the garden, the river, and the old house into gentle reflections on memory, nature, and time.

This is calm, Transcendentalist-era nonfiction, closer to nature writing and quiet philosophy than to the gothic fiction Hawthorne is better known for. It suits listeners who enjoy slow, literary essays and old New England settings, or anyone who wants Hawthorne's prose without a plot to follow.

Paced for dozing rather than suspense, this soft, unhurried reading lets the quiet of the old manse settle around you.