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Howe's Masquerade

Nathaniel Hawthorne

First published 1842
Type Short Fiction
Length Short Story

"At the Boston tavern, the Old Province House, once headquarters of the royal governors, the proprietor tells a visitor this legend: When Governor Howe gave an entertainment, the night before the patriots' victory in the siege of Boston, the guests were costumed as figures of history and fiction, with comic individuals in rags representing Washington and his generals. Late in the evening, a funeral march was heard, and a solemn procession of ancient figures passed through the ballroom. Colonel Joliffe, an aged patriot detained during the siege, was present with his granddaughter, and identified the apparitions as early Puritan governors, "summoned to form the funeral procession of royal authority in New England." According to legend, the procession reappears on each anniversary of the occasion." -- <i>The Concise Oxford Companion to American Literature</i>

First published (as by "the author of Twice-Told Tales") in The Democratic Review, May 1838.

Date Publication Publisher Type Page
1842 Twice-Told Tales James Munroe Collection |20
1897 Cover Twice-Told Tales Maynard, Merrill, & Co. Collection |4
1907 Cover Twice-Told Tales Houghton Mifflin Collection 272
1937 Cover The Complete Novels and Selected Tales of Nathaniel Hawthorne Modern Library Omnibus 952
1938 Strange Stories Longmans, Green and Co. Anthology 48
1965 Cover Twice-Told Tales Airmont Books Collection 141|141.2
August 1977 Cover Histoires de doubles Presses Pocket Anthology 267
1980 Cover Histoires de doubles France Loisirs Anthology 267
1982 Cover Tales and Sketches The Library of America Omnibus 626
1984 Cover Himera: Proză fantastică americană, Vol. 1 Editura Minerva Anthology 142
October 1989 Cover Twice-Told Tales Reader's Digest Collection 151
February 1996 Cover La grande anthologie du fantastique : 1 Omnibus (France) Omnibus 965
2001 Cover Twice-Told Tales Modern Library Collection 184
October 2004 Twice-Told Tales Project Gutenberg Collection 233
2007 Tales and Sketches The Library of America Omnibus |626
October 2008 The Snow-Image and Other Stories of the Supernatural Tartarus Press Collection 162
August 2010 Cover Twice-Told Tales Gray Rabbit Publications Collection 153