PENGUIN CLASSICS : THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES PB B – NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE-MILTON STERN-MILTON STERN

This enduring novel of crime and retribution vividly reflects the social and moral values of New England in the 1840s. Nathaniel Hawthorne s gripping psychological drama concerns the Pyncheon family, a dynasty founded on pious theft, who live for generations under a dead man s curse until their house is finally exorcised by love. Hawthorne, by birth and education, was instilled with the Puritan belief in America s limitless promise. Yet – in part because of blemishes on his own family history – he also saw the darker side of the young nation. Like his twentieth-century heirs William Faulkner and F. Scott Fitzgerald, Hawthorne peered behind propriety s facade and exposed the true human condition.