The Village Uncle
- Downloads
- Under 100
- Pages
- 17
About this book
The Village Uncle is one of Nathaniel Hawthorne's shorter pieces, originally published in 1834 and later collected in his Twice Told Tales collection. The piece is a reflective sketch in the imagined autobiographical mode that some of his shorter pieces worked in, with the central narrator presenting himself as an elderly uncle figure in a small New England fishing village reflecting on the long life he has led there.
The village uncle of the title gives Hawthorne room to develop the kind of imagined retrospective that the format encouraged. The narrator describes his memories of the village, his eventual marriage to a fisherman's daughter, the children and grandchildren he has accumulated, and the wider life that has been built across the decades in the small coastal community. The sketch captures the kind of quiet domestic happiness that the standard Hawthorne shorter piece did not always work with, with the framing as a kind of imagined alternative life that the narrator might have lived rather than as a literal autobiographical statement.
The coastal New England setting is rendered with the careful detail that Hawthorne's regional sketches reliably delivered, with the fishing village life, the tides and seasons, and the wider community providing the framework that the imagined life unfolds within. The sketch has been read by some critics as expressing a kind of wistful longing for the simple domestic happiness that Hawthorne's actual life as a writer and intellectual did not always allow.
For students of nineteenth century American literature, of New England regional writing, or of Hawthorne's wider catalogue, The Village Uncle is worth knowing.
About the author
More from this genre
See all- O OrmondOrmond
- H The House of the Secret (La Maison Des Hommes Vivants)The House of the Secret (La Maison Des Hommes Vivants)
- Q The Queen of the IsleThe Queen of the Isle
- T Tales of the SupernaturalTales of the Supernatural
- D The Devil's Elixir, Vol. 1The Devil's Elixir, Vol. 1
- P The Poor ClareThe Poor Clare
Books like this one
Discussion
No comments yet. Share a thought, a question or a favourite passage.
Copyright concern? Read our DMCA policy
Read or download
Public domain book This work is in the public domain and free of copyright. Anyone may read, download and share it.
- EPUB 92 KB
-
KINDLE Send to Kindle Send
- Download the EPUB file to this device.
- Open Amazon's Send to Kindle page, sign in, and add the file. Open Send to Kindle (opens in a new tab)
On a phone: open the downloaded EPUB and share it to the Kindle app.
You can also email the file to your Kindle address (it ends in @kindle.com) from an email address you approved in your Amazon account.
- PDF 196 KB
- MOBI 202 KB
Downloads start right away. How to open EPUB on your phone
Book facts
- Author
- Nathaniel Hawthorne
- Reading time
- About 35 minutes
- Pages
- 17
- Language
- English
- Genre
- Gothic Horror
- Formats
- PDF, EPUB, MOBI, Read online