A Select Party

In Nathaniel Hawthorne's dazzling "A Select Party," a company of symbolic guests gathers in a castle in the air, a cloud-built mansion lit by captured sunset and ruled by the Man of Fancy. Age and memory arrive first in the form of the Oldest Inhabitant, followed by satirical embodiments of gossip, reputation, public admiration, and social rumor, turning the party into a comic parade of how society invents and misjudges its own legends. As the host welcomes figures from his youthful imagination, ideal heroes and dream-women prove hollow beside the unsettling truths of memory, fear, and maturity. The gathering widens into a meditation on American literature, unrealized genius, and the strange value of imperfect humanity when the humble Master Genius is revealed, while Posterity rejects vanity and praises honest living. Wondrous chambers of moonlight, ideal statues, and unwritten masterpieces celebrate artistic possibility itself. Yet the splendor cannot last: in a radiant hall and impossible banquet, delight is finally swept away by an approaching storm, leaving the company in comic disarray and underscoring the fragility of any pleasure-party in the realm of fancy. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.