Little Annie’s Ramble

Little Annie’s Ramble is one of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s shorter pieces from his Twice Told Tales collection of 1837. The piece is a charming sketch in which the narrator escorts a small child named Annie on a brief walk through the streets of a New England town, with the various scenes and shops they encounter providing the structure for the wider reflective content. The sketch captures the way that adult observation of a familiar town through the wondering eyes of a young child can reveal qualities that the adult would otherwise have stopped noticing.

Hawthorne uses the framing device of the adult narrator and child companion to develop the kind of warm and gently humorous prose that his shorter sketches reliably delivered. The piece is brief, atmospheric, and written in his characteristic prose style. For students of nineteenth century American literature, of New England regional writing, or of Hawthorne’s wider catalogue, Little Annie’s Ramble is a charming small piece worth knowing.