Hawthorne's career was probably as tranquil and uneventful a one as ever fell to the lot of a man of letters; it was almost strikingly deficient in incident, in what may be called the dramatic quality.
Originally published in 1879, Henry James's Hawthorne has been out of print for many years.
A biography of Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-64), an influence on James' own writing, and perhaps the first uniquely American novelist.
Our readers see the books the same way that their first readers did decades or a hundred or more years ago. Books from that period are often spoiled by imperfections that did not exist in the original.