Besides five novels (Fanshawe, The Scarlet Letter, The House of the Seven Gables, The Blithedale Romance, and The Marble Faun), Hawthorne published three collections of tales (Twice-Told Tales, Mosses from an Old Manse, and The Snow-Image), from which contemporary readers probably know about a dozen stories. Hawthorne had an unusual career, in fact, for a writer whom many consider the greatest American writer of the nineteenth century. Except for the early novel (Fanshawe) that he disavowed and tried to suppress, he wrote only short stories and sketches for the first twenty years of his career. Then, in 1850 (at the age of 45), he published The Scarlet Letter – a novel, and the longest, most complex work he had yet published. After that, he wrote virtually no short fiction for the rest of his career. Instead, he wrote additional long works.

Hawthorne labeled those long works romances rather than novels, and the distinction he made has influenced scholars looking for ways to define an American tradition of novel writing. In his preface (“The Custom-House”) to The Scarlet Letter, a Romance (its full title), he noted that “moonlight, in a familiar room, falling so white upon the carpet, and showing its figures so distinctly, – making every object so minutely visible, yet so unlike a morning or noontide visibility, – is a medium the most suitable for a romance-writer” (1: 35).