This is the best selection to buy of Hawthorne's short stories because it is NOT a selection, it is complete and, if you believe the editor, it's actually more accurate in its assessment of what is and is not a Hawthorne story than some complete collections because he did not include here some stories that his co-editors on the Hawthorne Centenary Edition did want to include. (Hawthorne spent much of his career as an underpaid and unsung magazine writer and some of his work went with no byline and without reprinting at his own choice, so what he wrote is no easy matter to decide.) The stories are, you probably know if you're looking up this book, stark and wonderful. But some of them are also twee and a little fanciful and not so wonderful. That too is instructive. One very useful thing about this volume is that it includes a listing of when each story first saw print in magazine form and when in book form. In that way the reader can chart Hawthorne's development as a magazine writer and a professional which in every possible sense of the word he determined to become and despite some difficult odds finally was. Some of the most beautiful and terrifying stories in the language and a beautiful object to hold in your hand. Expensive, but if you can get it - this is the one to buy.

The only complaint I have about this book it its paper, which is "bible thin." The tales and sketches from all of Hawthorne's collections are included here, along with 16 previously uncollected stories. If you've read any of Hawthorne's more popularly anthologized tales, you will be amazed at the eloquence and quality of these lesser known jems.

The story concerns a massive bonfire in which the people of the world, convinced that their modern society has reached a state of near perfection,
determine to burn up all the outdated old knowledge from Man's dark past :

Once upon a time - but whether in the time past or time to come, is a matter of little or no moment- this wide world had become
so overburthened with an accumulation of worn-out trumpery, that the inhabitants determined to rid themselves of it by a general
bonfire. The site fixed upon, at the representation of the insurance companies, and as being as central a spot as any other on the
globe, was one of the broadest prairies of the West, where no human habitation would be endangered by the flames, and where
a vast assemblage of spectators might commodiously admire the show. Having a taste for sights of this kind, and imagining,
likewise, that the illumination of the bonfire might reveal some profundity or moral truth, heretofore hidden in mist or darkness,
I made it convenient to journey thither and be present.

As our narrator watches, into the flames go all of literature and art, the titles and insignias of rank, the decorations and medals bestowed upon
soldiers, the weapons, the fashionable clothing, the liquor and tobacco, the clerical vestments and the church buildings entire, all the accretions of
Western civilization, until even the Bible is added :

[A]s the final sacrifice of human error, what else remained to be thrown upon the embers of that awful pile, except the Book,
which, though a celestial revelation to past ages, was but a voice from a lower sphere, as regarded the present race of man?
It was done! Upon the blazing heap of falsehood and worn-out truth- things that the earth had never needed, or had ceased to need,
or had grown childishly weary of- fell the ponderous church Bible, the great old volume, that had lain so long on the cushion
of the pulpit, and whence the pastor's solemn voice had given holy utterance on so many a Sabbath day.

And so, purified in the flame, and rid of all of the hoary old thoughts that had been holding mankind back for so long, the reformers prepare to face
their perfect future. The former executioners, who have cast into the fire the implements used by the various nations for administering capital
punishment, commiserate about how they will no longer have any work, now that Man is perfect, but a stranger interrupts their reverie :

'The best counsel for all of us is,' remarked the hangman, 'that- as soon as we have finished the last drop of liquor- I help you,
my three friends, to a comfortable end upon the nearest tree, and then hang myself on the same bough. This is no world for us
any longer.'

'Poh, poh, my good fellows!' said a dark-complexioned personage, who now joined the group- his complexion was indeed
fearfully dark, and his eyes glowed with a redder light than that of the bonfire- 'Be not so cast down, my dear friends;
you shall see good days yet. There is one thing that these wiseacres have forgotten to throw into the fire, and without which
all the rest of the conflagration is just nothing at all; yes- though they had burnt the earth itself to a cinder.'

'And what may that be?' eagerly demanded the last murderer.

'What but the human heart itself!' said the dark-visaged stranger, with a portentous grin. 'And unless they hit upon some method
of purifying that foul cavern, forth from it will reissue all the shapes of wrong and misery-the same old shapes, or worse ones-
which they have taken such a vast deal of trouble to consume to ashes. I have stood by, this live-long night, and laughed in my
sleeve at the whole business. Oh, take my word for it, it will be the old world yet!'

This brief conversation supplied me with a theme for lengthened thought. How sad a truth- if true it were- that Man's age-long
endeavor for perfection had served only to render him the mockery of the Evil Principle, from the fatal circumstance of an error
at the very root of the matter! The heart-the heart- there was the little yet boundless sphere, wherein existed the original wrong,
of which the crime and misery of this outward world were merely types. Purify that inward sphere; and the many shapes of evil
that haunt the outward, and which now seem almost our only realities, will turn to shadowy phantoms, and vanish of their own
accord. But if we go no deeper than the Intellect, and strive, with merely that feeble instrument, to discern and rectify what is
wrong, our whole accomplishment will be a dream; so unsubstantial, that it matters little whether the bonfire, which I have so
faithfully described, were what we choose to call a real event, and a flame that would scorch the finger- or only a phosphoric
radiance, and a parable of my own brain!

For good reason does he call this tale a '"parable", for in just a few pages Hawthorne presents several of the central themes that unify his work,
ideas which form the very core of the conservative critique : that Man's sinfulness is an immutable part of his character; that rationalists, reformers,
and progressives delude themselves with their utopian notions of the perfectibility of Man; that in their delusion they do incalculable damage to the
culture, while leaving human nature untouched; and that, no matter the "progress" they make, evil lurks, waiting to rear its ugly head and shatter
their dreams.

GRADE : A+