Nathaniel Hawthorne Books in Order

Nathaniel Hawthorne added a w to his own surname to distance himself from his great-great-grandfather, the Salem witch-trial judge who never repented - and the guilt of old New England became his raw material. He served twelve years in the upstairs room he called the owl's nest, writing stories that sold badly, then surfaced in 1850 with The Scarlet Letter and became the first American novelist the world agreed was great. His shelf is small and strangely arranged: a disavowed debut he hunted copies of to destroy, two story collections, four romances, and children's Greek myths. This page runs it in order and marks where the skip-safe reading diverges from publication order (1828–1872).

Where to start

The Scarlet Letter (1850), the masterpiece. The House of the Seven Gables (1851) second.

Does the reading order matter?

Read the four romances as the spine, and read The Scarlet Letter (1850) first regardless of anything else - it is the shortest of the four and the reason the rest is in print. One practical note: The Scarlet Letter opens with a fifty-page essay called The Custom-House; it is famously skipped, and nothing in the novel depends on it, so read it afterward or not at all. The House of the Seven Gables (1851) is the curse-house romance; The Blithedale Romance (1852) is his Brook Farm novel; The Marble Faun (1860), written in Rome, is the longest and the critics' late favorite - read it last. Before all of them sit the two story collections, Twice-Told Tales (1837) and Mosses from an Old Manse (1846), where the owl's-nest decade lives; Young Goodman Brown and Rappaccini's Daughter are in there. Fanshawe (1828) is the debut he tried to bury; read it last, as a curiosity. A Wonder-Book (1851) and Tanglewood Tales (1853) are the Greek myths he told his children - the gentlest things he wrote

Which one is the best?

The Scarlet Letter (1850); The House of the Seven Gables (1851); The Marble Faun (1860), the late critics' favorite.

Covered in depth here

An 8-question quiz, reading time, club questions and verified quotes for The Scarlet Letter.

Related guides

Readers finishing this shelf usually want the map next door: Herman Melville books in order, Mary Shelley books in order, Bram Stoker books in order. Every guide follows the same format — the shelf, the entry point, the honest answer about order.

Make it a project

Pick a session size and let the days accumulate — at the pace our reading speed test measures, most shelves above clear in a few weeks of half-hours. Every guide on the books in order shelf follows this same format, and when a book lands, its 8-question quiz is waiting on the original book quiz.