Mosses from an Old Manse. In Two Parts. [Half-Title Includes:] Wiley & Putnam's Library of American Books

Wiley and Putnam, 1846. First Edition, First Issue. Hardcover. Very Good. 8vo (5 1/8 x 7 3/16 inches).Pp. vi, 207, [blank], Bound in publisher's original blind-stamped cloth, gilt lettering on spine. Original pink patterned endpapers. A few leaves roughly opened along top edge (approximately 1/8 inch only); scattered light foxing, spine and edges mildly sunned. A superb copy. First edition, first issue, with Craighead and Smith imprint on both title versos and blank p. 212 in vol. two. Of copies in cloth, BAL reveals that page (212) "in the earliest printings is wholly blank; in known reprints this page is used as the title page, dated 1846, for a publisher's catalog.The Old Manse refers to the Concord house occupied Hawthorne and his wife, Sophia Peabody Hawthorne, and is the title of his essay introducing the subsequent 25 short stories.Upon publication, Hawthorne sent copies to several critic-acquaintances, including Margaret Fuller, Herman Melville and Edgar Allan Poe. While Poe was favorable, he took issue with Hawthorne's association with the Transcendentalists; Melville, by contrast, was unconditional in praise, noting that the stories will beguile with sparkle, but that underneath "his black conceit pervades him through and through."A desirable copy, now housed in a clear, archival sleeve. BAL 7898; CLARK A15.1.a.