Fanshawe

Hawthorne's first novel, published anonymously when he was a young man, is set at a small New England college. It centers on Ellen Langton, a young woman living under the guardianship of the college president, and on the men who come into her life: a sincere young student, Edward Walcott, and the brooding scholar Fanshawe, who is cut off from his fellows. A danger arrives that tests them all. The book is short and conventional compared with his later work, and Hawthorne later tried to suppress it, but it hints at his interest in solitude and moral struggle.