Excerpt from Anthony Trollope's article "The
Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne," The North American Review. Volume 129,
Issue 274, September 1879 (courtesy of Library of Congress and Cornell University
Library; the American Memory Project)
British novelist Anthony Trollope finds a quiet drollery even in the darkest
passages of Hawthorne's work and suggests that even our deepest sufferings
are not so important as to elevate us above others. If Trollope is correct,
this might be due to Hawthorne's modest unwillingness to exalt anything, even
sin and its suffering, to a place where it might invite pride.
Full text of the article is available online at: American
Memory Project
Khan, Jemshed A. “Atropine
Poisoning in The Scarlet Letter.” NEJM 311 (6):414-6.
Boston: Massachusetts Medical Society, 1984. Rpt. in CSA Bulletin.
Ed. Audrey Shafer, MD. April-June, 2003: 49-55.
This article in the online California Society of Anesthesiologists Bulletin
by a Harvard trained physician argues that Chillingworth may have used atropine
to poison Dimmesdale and that the drug, not just Dimmesdale’s guilt, explain
some of his unusual behavior.
