The text is that of the Centenary Edition of the Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne produced at the Ohio State University Center for Textual Studies—a critical unmodernized reconstruction—to which the editors of this Norton Critical Edition have added extensive annotation.

The selection of Backgrounds and Sources focuses on Hawthorneís visit to Brook Farm in 1841, as reported in his letters and The American Notebooks, as well as on other experiences and observations which find expression in the novel.

The essays in Criticism include fifteen Contemporary Reviews that locate the problems of the novel pursued by later critics in a more detailed and sophisticated fashion.

Modern Essays in Criticism represent the perspec-tives of Irving Howe, Roy R. Male, A. N. Kaul, Leo B. Levy, Hans-Joachim Lang, Philip Rahv, Allan B. Lefcowitz, Barbara F. Lefcowitz, Nina Baym, Hyatt H. Waggoner, Frederick C. Crews, Kelley Griffith, Jr., Louis Auchincloss, James H. Justus, and Kent Bales.