In the introduction to The Scarlet Letter (1850), Nathaniel Hawthorne gives the reader an inside look at his writing process and motivation to create this story, very similar to the way Edgar Allan Poe exposes his procedure in “The Philosophy of Composition”(1846). This way of introducing a work gives the reader the context of the text in the author’s mind, and makes the author’s intentions much clearer.

Hawthorne uses these pages to tell about his break from the literary scene in which he worked in a Custom-House where he found the documents that prompted the idea of this plot but not the inspiration to write, and his eventual return to writing where the ideas allowed themselves to be written. He presents the relevant facts of his experience, and introduces the reader to the mystery of the scarlet letter, which gets them curious about the rest of the text. 

This is very similar to the way Poe published a break down of how he wrote “The Raven” four years earlier. Poe explains everything from how he decided upon the length of the poem to how he came to the refrain “nevermore”. He makes his writing seem more like a mathematical formula than artwork.

This idea of writing being a process, something that the public can see and understand directly goes against the ideas of Emerson, who seems to see writing as a work of genius, requiring a sort of insight that is divinely granted. It is logical that Poe would so openly contradict one of the most influential writers of the time, as he goes as far as calling out “the so called poetry of the so called transcendentalists.” But Hawthorne associated with the transcendentalists. He references both Emerson and Thoreau, and notes that he is taking some time away from their circle. 

It seems that something must have occurred to prompt such a decisive break, a change of career, and shift in philosophy. I hope to uncover more about this pivot in further research.