Richard H. Millington

A definite 5*****, especially with the Norton supplementary materials, which include selections from Hawthorne's letters as well as other materials pertaining to the Brook Farm communitarian experiment of the mid-1840s. As always, some critical articles are better than others, but this edition's articles generally get high marks from me (with one exception, Russ Castronovo's "The Half-Living Corpse: Females Mediums, Seances, and the Occult," which includes a good bit of rather confusing Marxist criticism). This edition, based on the "Centenary Edition" of Hawthorne's works, also includes three passages not appearing in the "Centenary Edition" but which the editor considered of interest (for example, a critique of the temperance movement) and marked appropriately for easy identification.

5***** not only to Norton but also to the novel itself, which is the one Hawthorne novel I've never read and am finally getting around to.… (altro)