New edition of The House of the Seven Gables

The recent Signet Classics edition of Nathaniel Hawthorne's The House of the Seven Gables features a new introduction by Marblehead's Katherine Howe, friend of the NSLT and author of The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane. Not bad double-billing, Kate!

As she points out, one of Hawthorne's more notable, irascible comments is something he wrote to his publisher in 1855, "America is now wholly given over to a damned mob of scribbling women, and I should have no chance of success while the public taste is occupied with their trash..." Sorry Nate, there's no stopping the scribblers.

Brenda Wineapple, author of Hawthorne: A Life, contributes a new afterward as well. (Her more recent book, White Heat: The Friendship of Emily Dickinson and Thomas Wentworth Higginson, has been on my impossibly long to-read list for the last year.)

The Great Boston Poetry Marathon: Monday, October 11

Long time, no update—yikes! Life and work have veered away from the North Shore and away from the literary world over the past year (among other things, some travel writing and a return to school for Tufts University's museum studies program), but I'm still keeping my eyes open for events that north-of-Boston book lovers might be interested in.

Fortunately it's not too late to pass along news of the Great Boston Poetry Marathon, organized by Walter Skold of the Dead Poet's Society. The day-long event starts on Monday in Gloucester with readings of Vincent Ferrini and Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, just to pick two poets who are featured in The North Shore Literary Trail. Check out the sunrise-to-sunset schedule here and join them for the long haul, or drop in anywhere along the path from Gloucester to Boston to Concord.

Here's a great post on National Geographic's Intelligent Traveler blog (nice!) about Dead Poets Remembrance Day (October 7) and some of the events organized around it, including the poetry marathon. The events planned at the Robert Frost Farm in Derry, New Hampshire for Sunday, October 10, would be a great field trip from greater Boston.