Literature Network » Nathaniel Hawthorne

The battered trunk.(Findings; biography writing)

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From: American Scholar
Date: 20050622
Author:Wineapple, Brenda

There I was, on a warm summer's day, sipping hot tea out of a delicate porcelain cup with a group of octogenarian Hawthornes. Writing biography, as I was of Nathaniel Hawthorne, one pries open every oyster, hoping to find that single pearl, and so there I was in Connecticut in 1997, sipping tea.

One member of the group was, Hawthorne's great-grandson, a man eerily resembling his famous forebear. Soon his wife sidled up to me on the couch and pressed a phone number into my hand. Her niece had recently hired a plumber who, while fixing a leaky pipe, had stumbled over a battered ...

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