Poe's Quarrel with Boston Writers

Nanthaniel Hawthorne
Mosses from an Old Manse
New York: Wiley and Putnam, 1846
(with author-signed Custom House document dated May 7, 1849)

The publication of this second collection of short stories, four years after Twice-Told Tales appeared in the year following the Lyceum lecture fiasco, found Poe in a different frame of mind about Hawthorne. The 1842 review described Hawthorne as a "skillful literary artist" whose tales excel in "invention, creation, imagination, [and] originality"; the 1847 review, written after Mosses from an Old Manse appeared, insisted that "he is not original in any sense."

Boston Public Library, Rare Books & Manuscripts