Barlowe, Jamie. The Scarlet Mob of Scribblers: Rereading Hester Prynne. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2000. Provocative feminist study that includes a very interesting analysis of The Scarlet Letter and the 1995 movie version of the novel.Google Scholar

Baym, Nina. “The Scarlet Letter”: A Reading. Boston: Twayne, 1986. Excellent introductory book on The Scarlet Letter by one of Hawthorne's best critics.Google Scholar

Baym, Nina. The Shape of Hawthorne's Career. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1976. A groundbreaking study of Hawthorne when first published. Especially good insights into the role Hawthorne's women characters play in his major fiction.Google Scholar

Bell, Millicent, ed. New Essays on Hawthorne's Major Tales. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Includes five essays by well-known scholars, with attention to “Rappaccini's Daughter,” “The Minister's Black Veil,” “Ethan Brand,” “My Kinsman, Major Molineux,” “Roger Malvin's Burial,” “The Celestial Railroad,” and “Young Goodman Brown.”Google Scholar

Bell, MillicentHawthorne and the Real: Bicentennial Essays. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2005. Written in honor of Hawthorne's two-hundredth birthday, a dozen essays on various topics by prominent Hawthorne scholars.Google Scholar

Bercovitch, Sacvan. The Office of“The Scarlet Letter”. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991. Very influential study, exemplifying New Historicist cultural approach. Examines the novel in light of nineteenth-century politics and finds it to be in league with desires to “embrace gradualism and consensus” on issues such as slavery.Google Scholar

Berlant, Lauren. The Anatomy of National Fantasy: Hawthorne, Utopia, and Everyday Life. University of Chicago Press, 1991. Ranges between seventeenth- and nineteenth-century moments to explore Hawthorne's politics, particularly his representation of citizenship.Google Scholar

Brodhead, Richard. The School of Hawthorne. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986. Emphasis on Herman Melville, William Dean Howells, Henry James, and William Faulkner and their fictional responses to Hawthorne's example.Google Scholar

Budick, Emily Miller. Engendering Romance: Women Writers and the Hawthorne Tradition, 1850–1990. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994. Places Hawthorne at the head of a female tradition of romance writing that includes Carson McCullers, Flannery O'Connor, Toni Morrison, and Grace Paley (as well as Henry James and William Faulkner).Google Scholar

Buitenhuis, Peter. “The House of the Seven Gables”:Severing Family and Colonial Ties. Boston: Twayne, 1991. Good introductory study of Hawthorne's second novel.Google Scholar

Cain, William E., ed. The Blithedale Romance. A Bedford Cultural Edition. Boston: Bedford Books, 1996. Includes very useful background information on utopianism, as well as nineteenth-century political and economic theories.Google Scholar

Carton, Evan. “The Marble Faun”:Hawthorne's Transformations. New York: Twayne, 1992. Excellent introductory study of Hawthorne's last novel, emphasizing its engagement with nineteenth-century American issues.Google Scholar

Coale, Samuel Chase. In Hawthorne's Shadow: American Romance from Melville to Mailer. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1985. Wide-ranging study of Hawthorne's influence on such twentieth-century writers as William Faulkner, William Styron, Flannery O'Connor, John Cheever, John Updike, Norman Mailer, and others.Google Scholar

Coale, Samuel Chase. Mesmerism and Hawthorne: Mediums of American Romance. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1998. Useful account of Hawthorne's interest in and use of mesmerism in many of his works.Google Scholar

Colacurcio, Michael J.The Province of Piety: Moral History in Hawthorne's Early Tales. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984. Meticulously studies Hawthorne's knowledge of historical sources in stories such as “Young Goodman Brown,” “The Minister's Black Veil,” “My Kinsman, Major Molineux,” “Wakefield,” “Roger Malvin's Burial,” “The Gentle Boy,” and others.Google Scholar

Colacurcio, Michael J., ed. New Essays on “The Scarlet Letter”. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985. Includes four essays on the novel, including one by Colacurcio.Google Scholar

Crews, Frederick. The Sins of the Fathers: Hawthorne's Psychological Themes. New York: Oxford University Press, 1966. A provocative Freudian study of Hawthorne's writing; excellent psychoanalytic analyses of tales and novels.Google Scholar

Dauber, Kenneth. Rediscovering Hawthorne. Princeton University Press, 1977. Emphasizes Hawthorne's poetics, discounting his “visionary” tendencies, in favor of a structuralist approach that discovers stories layered one upon the other.Google Scholar

Davis, Clark. Hawthorne's Shyness: Ethics, Politics, and the Question of Engagement. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005. In contrast to recent studies critical of Hawthorne's politics, emphasizes Hawthorne's engagement – and complex depiction of engagement – with ethical questions.Google Scholar

DeSalvo, Louise. Nathaniel Hawthorne. Atlantic Highlands: Humanities Press, 1987. An important feminist study critical of Hawthorne's attitudes toward women.Google Scholar

Easton, Alison. The Making of the Hawthorne Subject. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1996. Especially valuable study of Hawthorne's early development as a writer and his efforts to devise a viable authorial “self.”Google Scholar

Erlich, Gloria C.Family Themes and Hawthorne's Fiction: The Tenacious Web. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1984. Part biography, part criticism. Emphasizes Hawthorne's early childhood experiences and three themes: maternal deprivation, paternal loss, and domination by stepfather figures.Google Scholar

Gale, Robert L.A Nathaniel Hawthorne Encyclopedia. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1991. Very important reference source. Includes detailed entries on just about everything a reader might think of asking about.Google Scholar

Herbert, T. Walter. Dearest Beloved: The Hawthornes and the Making of the Middle-Class Family. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993. Provocative family biography that portrays Hawthorne and his wife as victims of nineteenth-century separate spheres ideologies that in turn victimize their children. Keys each of four sections to one of the major romances.Google Scholar

Hutner, Gordon. Secrets and Sympathy: Forms of Disclosure in Hawthorne's Novels. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1988. Sympathy enables characters to cross the boundary between themselves and ourselves and so achieve understanding and knowledge.Google Scholar

Idol, John L. Jr., and Ponder, Melinda, eds. Hawthorne and Women: Engendering and Expanding the Hawthorne Tradition. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1999. Important collection of essays on Hawthorne's relationship to certain women, as well as on his influence on many women writers.Google Scholar

Idol, John L. Jr., and Jones, Buford, eds. Nathaniel Hawthorne: The Contemporary Reviews. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994. Very good, although not complete, collection of early reviews of Hawthorne's publications.Google Scholar

Johnson, Claudia Durst, ed. Understanding “The Scarlet Letter”: A Student Casebook to Issues, Sources, and Historical Documents. Westport: Greenwood, 1995. Includes excerpts from seventeenth-century, nineteenth-century, and even twentieth-century documents to aid readers in developing various historical contexts for understanding the novel.Google Scholar

Kesterson, David B., ed. Critical Essays on Hawthorne's“The Scarlet Letter”. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1988. Good collection of previously published essays.Google Scholar

Laffrado, Laura. Hawthorne's Literature for Children. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1992. The only book-length study of Hawthorne's several collections of tales for children.Google Scholar

Leverenz, David. Manhood and the American Renaissance. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989. Very important study of nineteenth-century American literature and its engagement with questions about manhood. Includes two insightful chapters on Hawthorne.Google Scholar

Levine, Robert S., ed. The House of the Seven Gables. New York: W. W. Norton, 2006. Norton Critical Edition includes many important essays and background information on the novel.Google Scholar

Luedtke, Luther S.Nathaniel Hawthorne and the Romance of the Orient. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989. Fascinating study emphasizing Hawthorne's knowledge of Oriental history and culture – his knowledge of The Arabian Nights, for example.Google Scholar

McWilliams, John P. Jr.Hawthorne, Melville, and the American Character: A Looking-Glass Business. Cambridge University Press, 1984. Demonstrates connections in Hawthorne's fiction among seventeenth-century, eighteenth-century, and nineteenth-century moments in American history.Google Scholar

Martin, Terence. Nathaniel Hawthorne. Revised Edition. Boston: Twayne, 1983. Excellent introduction to Hawthorne's major works.Google Scholar

Mellow, James R.Nathaniel Hawthorne in His Times. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1980. The most comprehensive Hawthorne biography, with detailed treatment of many important events in Hawthorne's life.Google Scholar

Miller, Edwin Haviland. Salem Is My Dwelling Place: A Life of Nathaniel Hawthorne. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1991. Biographical study that sees Hawthorne as a “gentle boy” anxious about his sexuality and his manliness. Provocative speculations on the homoerotic dimensions of Hawthorne's friendship with Melville.Google Scholar

Miller, J. Hillis. Hawthorne and History: Defacing It. Cambridge, MA: Basil Blackwell, 1991. Focuses on “The Minister's Black Veil” and the theory of history and historical knowledge that may be inferred from it. Concludes that all signs are potentially unreadable, or that the reading of them is potentially unverifiable.Google Scholar

Millington, Richard H.Practicing Romance: Narrative Form and Cultural Engagement in Hawthorne's Fiction. Princeton University Press, 1992. Synthesizes Freudian psychoanalysis, New Historicism, reader-response theory, and other critical methodologies to examine the interplay of individual and society in Hawthorne's fiction.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Millington, Richard H., ed. The Cambridge Companion to Nathaniel Hawthorne. Cambridge University Press, 2004. Excellent collection of a dozen topical essays by prominent scholars, each of them coming at Hawthorne from a different cultural angle.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Mitchell, Thomas R.Hawthorne's Fuller Mystery. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1998. Very provocative book that argues for Margaret Fuller's influence on Hawthorne and his writing. Sees Fuller in “Rappaccini's Daughter” and in the four novels.Google Scholar

Moore, Margaret B.The Salem World of Nathaniel Hawthorne. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1998. Biographical study of Hawthorne's Salem background.Google Scholar

Newman, Lea Bertani Vozar. A Reader's Guide to the Short Stories of Nathaniel Hawthorne. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1979. A still useful survey of criticism on every one of Hawthorne's short works.Google Scholar

Person, Leland S.Aesthetic Headaches: Women and a Masculine Poetics in Poe, Melville, and Hawthorne. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1988. Includes three chapters on Hawthorne's major women characters.Google Scholar

Person, Leland S., ed. “The Scarlet Letter” and Other Writings. New York: W. W. Norton, 2005. Norton Critical Edition includes many important essays on the novel and on selected shorter works.Google Scholar

Pfister, Joel. The Production of Personal Life: Class, Gender, and the Psychological in Hawthorne's Fiction. Stanford University Press, 1991. Historicizes Hawthornian psychology by focusing on the intersection of gender and class (especially new middle-class domestic values) in Hawthorne's fiction.Google Scholar

Reynolds, Larry J., ed. A Historical Guide to Nathaniel Hawthorne. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001. Four essays situate Hawthorne's writing in relation to mesmerism, the visual arts, changing ideas about child-rearing, and the slavery question.Google Scholar

Rosenthal, Bernard, ed. Critical Essays on Hawthorne's“The House of the Seven Gables”. New York: G. K. Hall, 1995. Excellent collection of previously published essays.Google Scholar

Scharnhorst, Gary, ed. The Critical Response to Nathaniel Hawthorne's“The Scarlet Letter”. Westport: Greenwood, 1992. Very useful collection of reviews, especially nineteenth-century reviews of Hawthorne's most famous novel.Google Scholar

Schiff, James. Updike's Version: Rewriting“The Scarlet Letter”. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1992. Excellent study of John Updike's three “scarlet letter” novels, A Month of Sundays, Roger's Version, and S.Google Scholar

Thompson, G. R.The Art of Authorial Presence: Hawthorne's Provincial Tales. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1993. Considers Hawthorne a crafty manipulator of narrative voice in eight early tales, including “Alice Doane's Appeal,” “Roger Malvin's Burial,” “The Gentle Boy,” and “My Kinsman, Major Molineux.”Google Scholar

Turner, Arlin. Nathaniel Hawthorne: A Biography. New York: Oxford University Press, 1980. Excellent biography.Google Scholar

Frank, Albert J., ed. Critical Essays on Hawthorne's Short Stories. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1991. Good collection of previously published essays.Google Scholar

Wilson, James C.The Hawthorne and Melville Friendship: An Annotated Bibliography, Biographical and Critical Essays, and Correspondence Between the Two. Jefferson: McFarland, 1991. Good collection of documents and early critical studies of the Hawthorne–Melville relationship.Google Scholar

Wineapple, Brenda. Hawthorne: A Life. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2003. Excellent recent biography, especially good on Hawthorne's attitudes toward race, slavery, and abolition.Google Scholar