Editing Mosses from an Old Manse (section)

==Critical reception==
After the book's first publication, Hawthorne sent copies to critics including [[Margaret Fuller]], [[Rufus Wilmot Griswold]], [[Edgar Allan Poe]], and [[Henry Theodore Tuckerman]].<ref>{{cite book|author= Miller, Edwin Haviland|title= Salem is my Dwelling Place: A Life of Nathaniel Hawthorne|location= Iowa City|publisher= University of Iowa Press|date= 1991|page= [https://archive.org/details/salemismydwellin00mill/page/264 264]|isbn= 0-87745-332-2|url= https://archive.org/details/salemismydwellin00mill/page/264}}</ref> Poe responded with a lengthy review in which he praised Hawthorne's writing but faulted him for associating with New England journals, [[Ralph Waldo Emerson]], and the [[Transcendentalism|Transcendentalists]]. He wrote, "Let him mend his pen, get a bottle of visible ink, come out from the Old Manse, cut [[Amos Bronson Alcott|Mr. Alcott]], hang (if possible) the editor of '[[The Dial]],' and throw out of the window to the pigs all his odd numbers of the ''[[North American Review]]''."<ref>{{cite book|author= Sova, Dawn B.|title= Edgar Allan Poe: A to Z|location= New York|publisher= Checkmark Books|date= 2001|pages= [https://archive.org/details/edgarallanpoetoz0000sova/page/233 233]|isbn= 978-0-8160-4161-9|url= https://archive.org/details/edgarallanpoetoz0000sova/page/233}}</ref> 
A young [[Walt Whitman]] wrote that Hawthorne was underpaid, and it was unfair that his book competed with imported European books. He asked, "Shall real American genius shiver with neglect while the public runs after this foreign trash?"<ref name=Widmer109/> Generally, most contemporary critics praised the collection and considered it better than Hawthorne's earlier collection, ''[[Twice-Told Tales]]''.<ref>{{cite book|author= McFarland, Philip|title= Hawthorne in Concord|location= New York|publisher= Grove Press|date= 2005|pages= [https://archive.org/details/hawthorneinconco00mcfa/page/132 132]|isbn= 0-8021-1776-7|url= https://archive.org/details/hawthorneinconco00mcfa/page/132}}</ref>

Regarding the second edition, published in 1854, Hawthorne wrote to publisher [[James T. Fields]] that he no longer understood the messages he was sending in these stories. He shared, "I remember that I always had a meaning—or, at least, thought I had",<ref>{{cite book|author= Miller, Edwin Haviland|title= Salem Is My Dwelling Place: A Life of Nathaniel Hawthorne|location= Iowa City|publisher= University of Iowa Press|date= 1991|page= [https://archive.org/details/salemismydwellin00mill/page/248 248]|isbn= 0-87745-332-2|url= https://archive.org/details/salemismydwellin00mill/page/248}}</ref> and noted "Upon my honor, I am not quite sure that I entirely comprehend my own meaning in some of these blasted allegories... I am a good deal changed since those times; and to tell you the truth, my past self is not very much to my taste, as I see in this book."<ref>{{cite book|author= Crew, Frederick|title= The Sins of the Fathers: Hawthorne's Psychological Themes|location= Berkeley|publisher= University of California Press|date= 1989|pages= [https://archive.org/details/sinsoffathershaw1881crew/page/212 212]|isbn= 0-520-06817-3|url= https://archive.org/details/sinsoffathershaw1881crew/page/212}}</ref>