8vo. 4pp. publisher's advertisements dated March 1851 at front [BAL's printing B, no priority]. (Some spotting.) Original brown blind-embossed cloth, gilt-lettered spine [BAL's binding A] (some light pale stains to covers, slight lean to spine, light rubbing to spine ends and fore-corners).

FIRST EDITION of Hawthorne's gothic novel, published only a year after The Scarlet Letter. Inspired by the Turner-Ingersoll Mansion in Salem, Massachusetts, and family ties to the Witch Trials, the story follows a New England family and their ancestral home. BAL 7604.