...the crux of Henry James's study of Hawthorne. The latter had written, in preface to The Marble Faun: No author, without a trial, can conceive of the difficulty...antiquity, no mystery, no picturesque and gloomy wrong, not anything but a commonplace prosperity, in broad and simple daylight, as is happily the case with...

...complex layering of past and present and of moral ambiguity in Europe to the clean slate of America, "where there is no shadow, no antiquity, no mystery,...common-place prosperity, in broad and simple daylight" (3). But of course Hawthorne set much of his best work in America, exploring shadows and gloom and...

...to a foreign country ; for he gives as reason for this, that " no man, without a trial, can conceive the difficulty of writing a romance about a country...no shadow, no antiquity, no mystery, no picturesque or gloomy wrong." Of course not ; there is no picturesque or gloomy wrong, when that wrong is the suffering...

...core, head and spirit of that country. — Fanny Kemble (Mrs. Butler), A Year of Consolation, 1847 No author, without a trial, can conceive of the difficulty of writing a romance about a country [New England] where there is no shadow, no antiquity, no mystery, no picturesque and gloomy wrong,...

...authors as late as Hawthorne and James. As Hawthorne puts it in his preface to The Marble Faun (1860), "No author, without a trial, can conceive of the difficulty...daylight, as is happily the case with my dear native land" (3). While Hawthorne complains about the lack of gothic materials in America, he turns this lack into...

...Hawthorne suggests in his customary prefatory chapter, Italy seems to lend itself to this kind of mystery: No author, without a trial, can conceive of the difficulty...daylight, as is happily the case with my dear native land .... Romance and poetry, ivy lichens, and wall-flowers, need ruin to make them grow. 7 It seems to...

...unfavorable British response to Go Down, Moses, received almost no negative comments in Britain. No author can conceive of the difficulty of writing a romance...wrong, nor anything but a commonplace prosperity, as is happily the case with my dear native land. Hawthorne need not have worried: it did not remain...

...ever emerged. James notes that even Hawthorne himself had lamented in his preface to The Marble Faun "the difficulty of writing a Romance about a country where there is no shadow, no antiq37 uity, no mystery, no picturesque and gloomy wrong, nor anything but a common-place prosperity,...

...of primitive being and modern man. 'In our country,' says the American author, Nathaniel Hawthorne, 'there is no shadow, no antiquity, no mystery, no picturesque and gloomy wrong.' For an original primitive like Whitman his innate inclination is to do more or less primitive reading;...

...American stories, a response which would seem to confirm Hardy's reasons for declining the 'invitation'; No author, without a trial, can conceive of the difficulty...daylight, as is happily the case with my dear native land.4 Hawthorne could claim one of the longest pedigrees conceivable for an American of European descent,...