Footprints on the Sea-Shore

Footprints on the Sea Shore is one of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s shorter pieces, originally published in his 1842 collection Twice Told Tales. The piece is a personal essay in the reflective sketch tradition that Hawthorne worked in across many of his shorter works, with the central focus being a solitary walk along a New England beach and the various observations and reflections that the walk produces.

The footprints of the title refer both to the literal traces left by the walker and by various other people whose marks remain visible on the wet sand, and to the wider metaphorical sense of the marks that human lives leave on the world they pass through. Hawthorne uses the seaside walk as the framework for the kind of meditative essay that his shorter work reliably produced, with the natural setting providing the atmospheric weight and the various small observations becoming the occasions for the wider reflective material.

The piece is more atmospheric and reflective than narratively driven, with Hawthorne’s characteristic prose style giving the essay the kind of careful weight that his shorter work often delivered. The sea shore setting was one Hawthorne knew well from his New England life, and the careful observations of the beach environment, the seabirds, the fishermen and other beach users, and the wider natural setting give the essay its grounded quality.

For readers coming to Hawthorne through The Scarlet Letter and The House of the Seven Gables, Footprints on the Sea Shore shows him working in the personal essay register that complements his more famous fiction. For students of nineteenth century American literature or of the development of the American personal essay tradition, the piece is worth knowing.