The Birthmark

“The Birthmark” by Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864) was initially published in the March 1843 edition of The Pioneer, a short-lived literary periodical which was also the first to showcase Edgar Allan Poe’s famous “The Tell-Tale Heart.” “The Birthmark” was later serialized in Mosses From An Old Manse, a collection of Hawthorne’s short stories, in 1846. Widely considered to be one of the preeminent American writers of the nineteenth century, Nathaniel Hawthorne enjoyed a career trajectory fairly typical of his day. He started by concentrating exclusively on short stories before later moving on to the longer novel form. He is perhaps best known for these latter works, most famously The Scarlet Letter, but his short stories played a pivotal role in guiding the nineteenth century’s titanic shift from gothic horror to science fiction. “The Birthmark” represents both of these genres, and it is also considered a seminal work of dark Romanticism. It is in the public domain and is available by open source. This guide refers to the online version offered by Project Gutenberg.

The story’s protagonist, Aylmer, is a scientist who lives during an exciting time in “the latter part of the last century” (Paragraph 1).