Romancing the Author

Romancing the Author: Literary Tourism, Biographical Fiction, and the Afterlives of Hawthorne and Hester.

The First Annual Nathaniel Hawthorne Society Lecture with Professor Charles E. Baraw.

This talk travels from Hawthorne’s early tales and sketches to Laurie Lico Albanese’s Hester (2022) and Alice Hoffman’s The Invisible Hour (2023).  It asks why we visit the homes and haunts of authors.  What do we seek?  And it explores the intimate relation of literary tourism, Hawthorne’s art, and the vibrant tradition of writing after Hawthorne, the “Afterlives,” that Hoffman and Lico Albanese invent.  Why have travelers visited Salem in search of Hawthorne for nearly two hundred years?  Why do so many and such varied artists (novelists, dramatists, film makers, and more) animate Hawthorne and his characters in their own works? What does Hawthorne have to do with it?  These are some of the questions that will guide our visit to Hawthorne’s homes and haunts in and around Salem.

Professor Charles E. Baraw teaches at Southern Connecticut State University and is immediate Past President of the Hawthorne Society.

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