The Celestial Railroad and Other Stories - Softcover

Hawthorne, Nathaniel

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0451522133 ISBN 13: 9780451522139

Publisher: Signet Classics, 1963

Synopsis

Tells the stories of witches, a lynching, a vision, an attempt to create the perfect woman, forbidden experiments, secrets, and dreams

About this title

About the Author

Nathaniel Hawthorne was born on July 4, 1804, in Salem, Massachusetts, the son and grandson of proud New England seafarers. He lived in genteel poverty with his widowed mother and two young sisters in a house filled with Puritan ideals and family pride in a prosperous past. His boyhood was, in most respects, pleasant and normal. In 1825 he was graduated from Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Maine, and he returned to Salem determined to become a writer of short stories. For the next twelve years he was plagued with unhappiness and self-doubts as he struggled to master his craft. He finally secured some small measure of success with the publication of his Twice-Told Tales (1837). His marriage to Sophia Peabody in 1842 was a happy one. The Scarlet Letter (1850), which brought him immediate recognition, was followed by The House of the Seven Gables (1851). After serving four years as the American Consul in Liverpool, England, he traveled in Italy; he returned home to Massachusetts in 1860. Depressed, weary of writing, and failing in health, he died on May 19, 1864, at Plymouth, New Hampshire.

Review

Allegorical short story by Nathaniel Hawthorne, published in 1843 and included in his short-story collection Mosses from an Old Manse (1846). Following the path of Christian in John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress, the narrator travels from the City of Destruction to the Celestial City--not on foot as had the original pilgrim but as a passenger on the Celestial Railroad. Mr. Smooth-it-away, a friendly fellow traveler, comments contemptuously about the arduous trip the old-fashioned pilgrims had to undergo. At the journey's end, Mr. Smooth-it-away leaves the other passengers and divulges his true identity by breathing fire and brimstone. The narrator awakens and realizes, with great relief, that it has all been a dream. -- The Merriam-Webster Encylopedia of Literature

Edition details

• Publisher: Signet Classics
• Publication date: 1963
• ISBN 10: 0451522133
• ISBN 13: 9780451522139
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 304