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Where does evil live—in the dark forest, the strange garden, or the human heart?
Nathaniel Hawthorne opens Mosses from an Old Manse at a quiet house beside the Concord River, then leads you into tales of mystery and moral doubt. In Young Goodman Brown, a newly married Puritan leaves his wife, Faith, for a mysterious errand in the forest. His trust is at stake, and even Faith's name carries more than one meaning.
In The Birth-Mark, Aylmer loves Georgiana but cannot accept the small crimson mark on her cheek. In Rappaccini's Daughter, Giovanni Guasconti watches a strange garden and falls for Beatrice, who longs for human company. Around these unsettling stories, Hawthorne gathers satires, allegories, and sketches. Fear meets wit, and questions about love, guilt, and human flaws resist easy answers.
What you’ll discover
- A house beside the river Enter The Old Manse through Hawthorne's opening essay about the house where he lives.
- Faith beneath the pink ribbons Follow Young Goodman Brown into a forest where his trust faces a troubling test.
- Love troubled by a mark Meet a scientist whose longing to remove his wife's birthmark unsettles his love.
- A garden of dangerous plants Discover Beatrice Rappaccini's longing for company among the strange plants her father grows.
- Wit with a moral edge Find comic satire in The Celestial Railroad and lingering guilt in Roger Malvin's Burial.
Who will love it
Readers who enjoy dark fables, haunted houses and dreamy walks through nature will love this collection. It suits those drawn to clashes between science, faith and love, and a narrator with a friendly voice.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- Ordinary places hold lasting truths
- Perfect beauty can eclipse love
- Doubt can swallow every kindness
- Appearances make a fragile trust
- The work holds its own reward
- Reform must reach the heart
- Self absorption shuts out human warmth
- A concealed weakness shapes a family
- Warm imperfect life deserves our care
Who’s who
- AylmerA brilliant scientist who loves his wife but cannot bear the small crimson birthmark on her cheek, and is determined to remove it.
- GeorgianaAylmer's beautiful wife, who shudders at his gaze and offers to risk everything so that her husband can find peace.
- Goodman BrownA young Salem husband who leaves his wife one night to meet a stranger in the forest and starts to doubt everyone he knows.
- FaithGoodman Brown's wife, who wears pink ribbons in her cap and begs him to stay home on the night he must go.
- Giovanni GuascontiA young student in Padua who falls in love with a woman he watches from his window in a garden of poisonous flowers.
- Beatrice RappacciniA glowing young woman raised among deadly plants by her father, who longs for love and trusts Giovanni at once.
- Dr. RappacciniA pale scholar who grows poisonous plants with deep care and keeps his daughter in a garden closed to the world.
- Owen WarlandA delicate watchmaker who neglects his trade to build a mechanism of pure beauty and loves Annie Hovenden.
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Mosses from an Old Manse
by Nathaniel Hawthorne · 1846
Aylmer loves Georgiana, his wife, yet grows obsessed with erasing the small crimson hand on her cheek despite the risks.
Challenging10–20 hours to read20 languages
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“And I found that but to glean after this man, is better than to be in at the harvest of others.”
In short
What would you give to remove one tiny flaw from the person you love? In The Birthmark, a scientist named Aylmer asks that question about his wife Georgiana, and his answer leads him into a laboratory full of perfume, poison and a servant made of soot and muscle.
Mosses from an Old Manse at a glance
- Reading time
- About 10 h 10 min8 h 5 min fast, 12 h 10 min slow
- Length
- 145,600 words
- Library level
- Challenging long sentences, a rich vocabulary
- First published
- 1846by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Reading time at 238 words a minute (fast 300, slow 200). How long the classics take to read · Updated
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
A quiet house gives the book its mood
The book opens at the Old Manse, a gray parsonage reached by a lane of black ash trees. A clergyman lived there and wrote nearly three thousand sermons in its rooms. Hawthorne moves in as its first tenant who is not a minister, hoping to write a deep book on morals. He finds a house full of ghosts, dust and apples instead.
He shows the reader around as a guest. The Concord River is so lazy that he cannot tell which way it flows, yet at sunset it mirrors the whole sky. In the attic he finds the old sermons dead, while old newspapers and almanacs still feel alive. Writing made for its own day, he says, carries a truth that lasts.
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Details
- First published
- 1846
- Language
- English
- Reading time
- 11 h 30 min
- Level
- Challenging
Cite this edition
Hawthorne, Nathaniel. Mosses from an Old Manse. Library of Alexandria, 2026, libraryofalexandria.com/products/mosses-from-an-old-manse.
Hawthorne, N. (2026). Mosses from an Old Manse. Library of Alexandria. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/mosses-from-an-old-manse (Original work published 1846)
Hawthorne, Nathaniel. Mosses from an Old Manse. Library of Alexandria, 2026. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/mosses-from-an-old-manse.
@book{hawthorne2026mosses,
author = {Hawthorne, Nathaniel},
title = {Mosses from an Old Manse},
publisher = {Library of Alexandria},
year = {2026},
url = {https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/mosses-from-an-old-manse},
note = {First published 1846}
}
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What is Mosses from an Old Manse about?
It is a collection of tales and sketches by Hawthorne, opened by an essay on the Concord parsonage where he lived. The stories explore guilt, love, science, faith and imagination through scenes such as a forest meeting, a poison garden and a walking scarecrow.
What is the story The Birthmark about?
A scientist named Aylmer marries the beautiful Georgiana but cannot stand the small hand-shaped mark on her cheek. He tries to remove it with his experiments. The tale asks what happens when a person demands perfection from someone he loves.
Which stories are in Mosses from an Old Manse?
The best known are The Birthmark, Young Goodman Brown, Rappaccini's Daughter, Roger Malvin's Burial, Feathertop and The Artist of the Beautiful. It also holds allegories like The Celestial Railroad and Earth's Holocaust, and travel sketches from the White Mountains and the canal.
The author
Nathaniel Hawthorne
1804–1864 · American novelist
Nathaniel Hawthorne was an American novelist and short-story writer born in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1804. He lived in Massachusetts and served as a United States consul in Liverpool, England. He wrote The Scarlet Letter (1850) and The House of the Seven Gables (1851). He died in Plymouth, New Hampshire, in 1864.
“It gnaws me! It gnaws me!”
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