Black Tulip of American Literature Collecting: Hawthorne’s First Located Appearance in Print
Hawthorne, Nathaniel. “The Ocean” in The Salem Gazette
Salem, Massachusetts: Ferdinand Andrews and Caleb Foote, 26 August 1825
In a run of the Gazette spanning January to December 1825. Folio. Blue paper boards. Very good.
A black tulip of American literature collecting, this 16-line poem is the earliest located appearance of any of Hawthorne’s work.
“Material by Hawthorne, presumably verse, appeared in newspapers as early as 1819 according to a reference in a letter to his sister Maria Louisa dated Salem, Tuesday, 28 September 1819: ‘Tell Ebe [sister Elizabeth] she’s not the only one of the family whose works have appeared in the papers.’ The work Hawthorne refers to has not been located” (Clark).
This copy is from the collection of Hawthorne’s foremost bibliographer, C. E. Frazer Clark, Jr. According to Clark, the last copy to be sold at auction was the Stephen Wakeman copy in 1924.
Clark, Nathaniel Hawthorne: A Descriptive Bibliography D1
$4,500