Little Masterpieces

Hawthorne made three collections of his short stories and sketches: "Twice-Told Tales," "Mosses from an Old Manse," and "The Snow Image and Other Tales." The prefaces to these volumes express, with characteristic charm, the author's dissatisfaction with his handiwork. No critic has pointed out so clearly as Hawthorne himself the ineffectiveness of some of the "Twice-Told Tales"; he thinks that the "Mosses from an Old Manse" afford no solid basis for a literary reputation; and his comment upon the earlier and later work gathered indiscriminately into his final volume is that "the ripened autumnal fruit tastes but little better than the early windfalls."