A thick and darksome veil

Much has been written on Nathaniel Hawthorne's novels and tales, but his sketches, prefaces, and essays have been generally overlooked. Thomas R. Moore considers these lesser-known works to be the central battleground for Hawthorne's struggle to balance "the demands of his readership for a sentimental and nostalgic style and his own demands for a more truthful discourse and subject matter." This tension is a major concern of any publishing writer, but it was particularly relevant for the writers of the American Renaissance: Emerson eloquently distinguished between the "partial and noisy readers of the hour" and "an eternal public." As they sought to forge a literary tradition, American writers met with the artistic obstacle of the public preference for sentimental novels and stories of the past.