Ministers Black Veil Essays: The Minister’s Black Veil and its Author :: Ministers Black Veil Essays

The Ministers Black embryonic membrane and its Author Evaluated By Contemporaries Initially, of course, Nathaniel Hawthornes short stories went unranked among those of early(a) American and British writers. But his reputation, along with the popularity of his works, grew gradually even among contemporaneous critics, until he was recognized as a man of magician. Edgar Allen Poe, in a review of Hawthornes work, said in Godeys Ladys Book, November, 1847, no. 35, pp. 252-6 It was never the path (until lately) to speak of him in any summary of our best authors. . . . The peculiarity or sameness, or monotone of Hawthorne, would, in its mere character of peculiarity, and without reference to what is the peculiarity, coiffe to deprive him of all chance of popular appreciation. But at his blow to be appreciated, we can, of course, no longer wonder, when we find him monotonous at decidedly the worst of all possible points--at that point which, having the least concern with Nature, is the farthermost removed from the popular intellect, from the popular sentiment and from the popular taste. I meet to the strain of allegory which completely overwhelms the greater number of his subjects. So literary critic Edgar Allan Poe thinks that Hawthornes heavy reliance on allegory is the arrange of his lack of popularity during the 1830s and 40s. In 1848 James Russell Lowell wrote a magical spell of poetry entitled Hawthorne for the periodical A Fable for Critics There is Hawthorne, with genius so shrinking and rare That you hardly at first cop the strength that is there A frame so robust, with a personality so sweet, So earnest, so graceful, so lithe and so fleet, Is deserving a descent from Olympus to meet Tis as if a rough oak tree that for ages had stood, With his gnarled bony branches like ribs of the wood, Should bloom, later on cycles of struggle and scathe, With a unity anemone trembly and rathe His strength is so tender, his wildness so meek. . . . The author considers that now, after cycles of struggle and scathe, Hawthorne is finally emerging into recognition for his work. In 1850 Herman Melville wrote Hawthorne and His Mosses for The Literary World, lofty 17 and 24 editions, in which he humbly acknowledges the genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne