Book summary

Hawthorne's young American, Hilda, became the model for Henry James's innocent heroines faced with the corrupt sophistications of Europe. This novel, Hawthorne's last, takes place in Rome and centers on a group of friends: Donatello, who becomes a mature person only after he becomes corrupted; Miriam, who persuades him to commit a vengeful murder; and two Americans, Hilda and Kenyon, artists who are witnesses to these terrible events, and who return home sadder but wiser. Hawthorne's descriptions of the Roman milieu--the churches, museums, and streets of the city--are particularly rich and detailed.

Media reviews

"The nineteenth century has produced no more purely original writer than Mr. Hawthorne. A shallow criticism has sometimes fancied a resemblance between him and Poe. But it seems to us that the difference between them is the immeasurable one between talent carried to its ultimate, and genius,--between a masterly adaptation of the world of sense and appearance to the purposes of Art, and a so thorough conception of the world of moral realities that Art becomes the interpreter of something profounder than herself. In this respect it is not extravagant to say that Hawthorne has something of kindred with Shakespeare."