Hawthorne's Transatlantic Gothic House of Fiction: The House of the Seven Gables

Poe's 1842 review of Hawthorne's Twice-Told Tales features an error--Poe suggests that Hawthorne's Howe's Masquerade (1838) may have plagiarized from William Wilson (1839), even though such plagiarism would be impossible, since Hawthorne's tale was published a year before William Wilson appeared. readers of Poe have long understood, Poe was not immune to tendency toward plagiarism he was so keen to descry in works of his peers. Poe's Life in Death (1842) (later Oval Portrait, 1845) and Masque of Red Death (1842) have been linked to Hawthorne's previously published Prophetic Pictures (1836) and Howe's Masquerade (1838) (Dowell, Lauber, Regan). More recently, Richard Kopley has reconceived The Scarlet Letter (1850) at least in part as a retelling of Tell-Tale Heart (1843). (1) Both Poe and Hawthorne came of age as writers in an era marked by a lack of international copyright, a situation that led to rampant and republication of written materials in English and subsequently depressed remuneration that writers on either side of Atlantic could expect or claim. Like Poe, Hawthorne spent his formative years as a writer mired in what Poe dubbed the Magazine Prison-House (1845), publishing for little pay in magazines, story-papers, and gift books. Both writers produced fiction during a period that was profoundly impacted by transatlantic publishing practices. Further, just as Poe apprenticed himself to what has been called British Magazine Tradition (Allen), Hawthorne was schooled by transatlantic periodicals, including Gentlemans Magazine, London Quarterly Review, Monthly Magazine, European Magazine, Edinburgh Review, and Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine (Kesselring). It has been argued that one of Hawthorne's early Gothic tales, Alice Doane's Appeal (1834), was significantly lifted from a partial translation of an E.T.A. Hoffmann novel Hawthorne read in an edition of Blackwood's, despite its Salem witch trials frame and its reference to American gift book, Token. Indeed, in review of Twice Told-Tales containing Poe's false accusation of plagiarism, Poe remarks on origins of what he calls tale of terror, or passion, or horror. Poe labels this genre collectively as tales of effect many fine examples of which found in earlier numbers of Blackwood. These were relished by every man of genius (Thompson 573); and, as Poe concludes review, Mr. Hawthorne is a man of truest genius (Thompson 577). While Poe failed in detecting a plagiarism in Hawthorne, he recognized influence of British fictional conventions, particularly those related to Gothic. Poe praised Twice-Told Tales in nationalistic terms: As Americans, we feel proud of (Thompson 574). The irony of Poe's praise, however, is that his fellow author is lauded as worthy of his British prototypes: Articles at random, now and then, might be advantageously compared with best effusions of British Magazines; but, upon whole, we are far behind our progenitors in this department of literature (Thompson 573-74). Just as both Poe and Hawthorne's fiction share Gothic conventions--the masquerade, double, haunted dwellings, dying women, obsessive individuals, self-punishing guilty, murderous if not murdering--both writers haunted by publishing norms that rewarded conventionality and stifled originality through a corrupt system of puffery and a transatlantic culture of reprinting (McGill; see also Charvat and Winship). Poe punned, 1842 edition of Twice-Told Tales--an updated reprint of a book of magazine fiction reprints--really meant that most of Hawthorne's stories in that collection thrice-told (Thompson 568). Both writers felt oppressed by scanty remuneration and small chance for recognition afforded by publishing in magazines and gift books. In early 1844, Hawthorne called writing stories for periodicals the most unprofitable business in world (16:23). …

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