Mosses from an old Manse, inscribed by Sophia Hawthorne - photo 1
Mosses from an old Manse, inscribed by Sophia Hawthorne - photo 2
Mosses from an old Manse, inscribed by Sophia Hawthorne - photo 3

Mosses from an old Manse, inscribed by Sophia Hawthorne

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$ 3 780
Auction dateClassic
15.06.2023 10:00UTC -04:00
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CHRISTIE'S
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ID 967566
Lot 85 | Mosses from an old Manse, inscribed by Sophia Hawthorne
Mosses from an old Manse, inscribed by Sophia Hawthorne

Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1846

HAWTHORNE, Nathaniel (1804-1864). Mosses from an old Manse. New York: Wiley and Putnam, 1846.



A presentation copy of the first edition, first printing, in original cloth, inscribed by Sophia Hawthorne to her father in the month of publication: "To my father from his affectionate daughter. S.A. Hawthorne. June 1846." Sophia Amelia Peabody and Nathaniel Hawthorne had been married in Boston at the Peabody Bookstore in July 1842, five years after they first met. They immediately rented and moved into the Old Manse in Concord, where Hawthorne would write most of the tales collected in Mosses. There they would also welcome their first child, Una, in 1844, and their second, Julian, in late May 1846—only a matter of weeks before the book was published and this copy inscribed.



Nathaniel Peabody (1774-1855), a dentist from Salem, Massachusetts, was considered meek and dominated by his wife Elizabeth Peabody. Never very successful, he was on occasion stubborn, bitter, and angry. His daughter Sophia would come to be critical (Patricia Dunlavy Valenti, Sophia Peabody Hawthorne: A Life, 2:94-95), but here she presented him with her husband’s just-published short story collection; there was clearly a filial devotion. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s own attitude toward his father-in-law was clarified by Sophia after her father’s death eight-and-a-half years later: “Mr. Hawthorne thinks father a very rare person & valued him more sincerely than any body else ever did. His sincerity, his childlike guilelessness, his good sense & rectitude—his singleness & unaffected piety—all & each of his qualities made him interesting & never tedious to my husband. I really do not believe anyone else ever listened to his stories & his conversation with love & interest excepting him.” Older sister Elizabeth did not dispute Hawthorne’s treatment of her father, only denying its uniqueness: “Mr. Hawthorne does all this, but I cannot agree he was the only person who did” (CE 17:302n). Sophia’s presentation attests to her fondness for her father, and perhaps, inasmuch as this was Nathaniel Hawthorne’s own work, it may intimate the writer’s approval of the gift and his sympathetic attitude towards Nathaniel Peabody himself. This copy is the first printing with the imprints for both Craighead and Smith on the copyright page. BAL 7598; Clark A.15.1a1.



Octavo (185 x 123mm). Half-titles. Original cloth (rubbed, chipping to spine ends). Provenance: Nathaniel Peabody, 1774-1885 (inscription from Sophia Hawthorne) – Henry Barrett Huntington, 1875-1965, professor of English (inscription to front endpaper dated April 1893).

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