"The House of the Seven Gables" by Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Visitor's Edition'; illustrated with 16 photographs by Charles S. Olcott, published by Houghton Mifflin Company, 1913. Special Introduction to Visitors' Edition by Caroline O. Emmerton is dated June 1913. This is the earliest editions that uses an image of the freshly restored Turner-Ingersoll Mansion on the cover.

Hard boards, original cloth, illustrated front board, yellow lettering on spine, 5" x 8"; "Mabel T. Sibley / Tercentenary of Salem, Mass. July 1926" is ink written on the front endpaper, pencil written "M.C. Macaulay"; monochrome photo frontispiece, 378 pages + 15 monochrome photographs on glossy paper, two pages have a small margin crease [see photo]; very good condition.

Nathaniel Hawthorne's The House of the Seven Gables is a classic of American literature, written by one of the country's greatest writers. First published in 1851, the book is set in a mansion not unlike his cousin's many-gabled home in Salem, Massachusetts, which Hawthorne visited regularly. Caroline O. Emmerton's introductory note to this 1913 edition details the history of the house, from its construction circa 1668 to its purchase and restoration by Emmerton in the early 1900's. Emmerton founded the House of the Seven Gables Settlement Association in 1910, to serve the growing population of immigrant factory workers flocking to Salem. To help fund the Settlement House, the mansion opened its doors to the public as a museum, also in 1910. This edition is illustrated with 16 photographs of interior and exterior views of the house.

"First published in 1851, The House of the Seven Gables is one of Hawthorne's defining works, a vivid depiction of American life and values, replete with brilliantly etched characters. The tale of a cursed house with a "mysterious and terrible past" and the generations linked to it, Hawthorne's chronicle of the Maule and Pyncheon families over two centuries reveals, in Mary Oliver's words, "lives caught in the common fire of history."

In a sleepy little New England village stands a dark, weather-beaten, many-gabled house. This brooding mansion is haunted by a centuries-old curse that casts the shadow of ancestral sin upon the last four members of the distinctive Pyncheon family. Mysterious deaths threaten the living. Musty documents nestle behind hidden panels carrying the secret of the family's salvation--or its downfall. Hawthorne called The House of the Seven Gables "a Romance," and freely bestowed upon it many fascinating gothic touches. A brilliant intertwining of the popular, the symbolic, and the historical, the novel is a powerful exploration of personal and national guilt, a work that Henry James declared "the closest approach we are likely to have to the Great American Novel."[a review]

US: Priority (c.2-4 days) ---------- $12.50
Canada: Priority (c.2-7 weeks) ---- $32.50
World: Priority (c.2-10 weeks) ---- $44.50