Hawthorne’s Two Bodies: Politics and Aesthetics inOur Old Home

Abstract

On January 4, 1863, Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote to thank Harriet Beecher Stowe for her “kind note of approval” of his essay on Delia Bacon, later collected in his last completed work, Our Old Home: A Series of English Sketches.1 A week earlier Stowe had written a heartfelt appreciation: In looking over the last Atlantic I came upon your “Recollections of a Gifted Woman,” and am compelled to express my gratitude for the noble and delicate tribute you have paid to the memory of an early friend and schoolmate … . Please accept deeper thanks than I can write—for nothing ever moved me deeper than this poor friend’s history.2