Cohen, B. Bernard, ed., The Recognition of Nathaniel Hawthorne: Selected Criticism since 1828, University of Michigan Press, 1969.

Starting with an overview of trends in Hawthorne, this collection of forty-three reviews and critical articles includes reviews by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Herman Melville, Edgar Allan Poe, William Dean Howells, and T. S. Eliot. "My Kinsman, Major Molineux" is not specifically mentioned.

James, Henry, Hawthorne, 1879; reprinted, edited by Dan McCall, Cornell University Press, 1998.

This first book-length critical study of Hawthorne is still in print in several editions, and still highly regarded. James appreciates Hawthorne's genius, but he has been accused of overemphasizing the "provincial" qualities of American life and of Hawthorne's own life and outlook.

Male, Roy R., Hawthorne's Tragic Vision, Norton, 1957.

Male traces moral growth as the primary concern of all of Hawthorne's important works. "My Kinsman, Major Molineux," he finds, is the story of Robin's quest for a...