Hawthorne's Habitations
A Literary Life
Robert Milder
Reviews and Awards
"Milder's intriguing study of the intersection between Nathaniel Hawthorne's life and work is a biography that's equal parts close reading and psychological portrait... A welcome addition to the body of writing on one of America's great novelists." --Publishers Weekly
"Recounts an 'internal' story, limning the development of a singularly introspective American literary artist, one who found his mental habitations in two contrasting outlooks - that of the well-known romancer and that of the lesser-known realist... This is an exceptionally acute and focused literary biography." --Booklist (starred review)
"A book all Hawthorne scholars will have to read, one that will greatly reward anyone who has read and been haunted by Hawthorne's works.." --America
"It is no secret that Hawthorne's fiction juxtaposed materiality and ideality as patent themes. Only Robert Milder, however, has shown how deeply rooted those categories were in his circumstances and personality; how he wavered precariously between their claims on him; and what price he paid, aesthetically, for hesitating to trust his considerable gifts as a realist. Hawthorne's Habitations brilliantly and fairly reassesses both the writer and his work." --Frederick Crews, author of Follies of the Wise: Dissenting Essays and The Sins of the Fathers: Hawthorne's Psychological Themes
"No one who reads this searching, deeply informed critical biography of Hawthorne will be able to think the same way again about the fraught relation between 'romance' and 'realism' in his thought and writing, or about the significance of the timing and sequence of his books. Despite the mountain of prior Hawthorne scholarship, Milder offers fresh insights on many fronts, culminating with his reassessment of the still-neglected literary upshot of Hawthorne's English sojourn." --Lawrence Buell, author of Emerson
"Robert Milder's expertly crafted close readings of Hawthorne's tales and romances synthesize several decades of scholarship even as they yield up their own gems of literary and biographical insight." --Megan Marshall, author of The Peabody Sisters
"[An] excellent study...Highly recommended." --Choice
"There is much to admire in this inclusive study." --Australian Book Review
