Other Tales and Sketches

Other Tales and Sketches is the kind of supplementary collection title used in various editions of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s complete works to gather together the shorter pieces that did not fit neatly into his major collections like Twice Told Tales, Mosses from an Old Manse, or The Snow Image. The various supplementary sections in the complete editions of Hawthorne preserve the kind of secondary and tertiary shorter pieces that fill out the wider catalogue of his shorter work.

The content of any particular Other Tales and Sketches volume depends on the specific editorial choices of the edition. Different editors of complete Hawthorne editions have made different decisions about which pieces belong in the major collections and which belong in the supplementary sections. The cumulative effect across the various editions is to provide readers with access to the full range of Hawthorne’s shorter work, even the pieces that did not enter the canonical collections during his lifetime.

For Hawthorne completists, for students of the development of his shorter fiction across his career, or for readers interested in seeing the range of his work beyond the major collections, the various Other Tales and Sketches volumes are useful resources. The pieces in these supplementary sections are generally less famous than the major works but often show interesting aspects of Hawthorne’s writing that the more anthologized pieces have made less visible.