The Weal-Reaf. A Record of the Essex Institute Fair, held at Salem, Sept. 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, with Two Supplementary Numbers, Sept. 10, 11.
[Salem, Mass: Charles W. Swasey], 1860.
Price: $350.00
About the item
[iv], 56, [4, ads] pp. 1 vols. 8vo. Contains the general title page, table of contents, and the four pages of fair advertisements at the end. Full green morocco gilt, unopened. With the engraved bookplate of Walter Thomas Wallace on the upper free endpaper. Upper cover and free endpaper detached but present, worn. Frazer Clark, D83; BAL 7623.
Item #9485
This is a newspaper published for the Essex Institute Fair in eight parts. Parts 2 and 3 (at pp. 14 and 28) contain a two-part letter from Hawthorne, addressed to “My Dear Cousin” and dated August 28, 1860. In it, Hawthorne explains that, while he is unable to write a story for the benefit of his “native townspeople” because his “mind seems to have lost the plan and measure of those little narratives [i.e. Twice-Told Tales and the Mosses from an old Manse], in which it was once so unprofitably fertile,” but, so as not to let them down, will attempt “to describe a spot near Salem, on which it was once my purpose to locate such a dreamy fiction as you now demand of me.” Hawthorne goes on to describe a hill once known as “Browne’s Folly.”.
