THE VACAY THAT INSPIRED A LITERARY CLASSIC

This is a tale about a house by the sea. A young writer visited often with to pass the time with his cousin, Susannah Ingersoll. Susannah was the daughter of a wealthy sea captain who lived with her family in a sprawling mansion right on the rocky coast of the Atlantic Ocean. The cousins spent many a lively evening in the dining room of said mansion. Since water was usually unsafe at this period of time (mid 1800s), spirits were often consumed for health’s sake, but it is not clear if said writer ever over-indulged. But while sitting in that house, something triggered the writer’s imagination, and he went on to write a dark romance, one met with critical acclaim, and one that has stood the test of time. 

The novel was first printed in 1851. The setting was Salem Massachusetts. The writer was Nathanial Hawthorne, and the book, The House of Seven Gables.

If you haven’t read it, or in the event you have forgotten, here is the opening paragraph:

“Halfway down a by-street of one of our New England towns stands a rusty wooden house, with seven acutely peaked gables, facing towards various points of the compass, and a huge, clustered chimney in the midst. The street is Pyncheon Street; the house is the old Pyncheon House; and an elm-tree, of wide circumference, rooted before the door, is familiar to every town-born child by the title of the Pyncheon Elm." (Click here to be taken to the Cliffs Notes for the entire novel.)