SOURCE: O'Brien, Edward J. “Hawthorne and Melville” and “Poe.” In The Advance of the American Short Story, pp. 42-87. New York: Dodd, Mead, and Company, 1923.

In the following essay, O'Brien discusses the contributions of Hawthorne, Melville, and Poe to the development of the American short story.

Few writers whose life was so uneventful as that of Nathaniel Hawthorne have left more biographical materials of their work for the critic. Of the many paradoxes which his life and writings reveal, none is more remarkable than the fact that a man whose shyness held him exceptionally aloof from men should have so frankly set down his dreams and hopes, his frustrations and disillusions, and shown no repugnance to their publication during his own lifetime. To the psychologist these materials, as well as the diaries and other records published posthumously by his son and others, are invaluable, and offer an unusual...