"Young Goodman Brown" as 1st Published (1835)

        This story was first published in New England Magazine Volume 8 (April 1835), pp. 249-60, also anonymously as "by the Author of The Grey Champion."  Copies of New England Magazine are very rare, but you have access to it through the Cornell University's digitized archive of the magazine, which you can access from this web site:  http://digital.library.cornell.edu/n/nwen/index.html.  "The Grey Champion" was another of NH's stories set in pre-Revolutionary New England and, like "MK,MM"'s exploration of mob violence directed at English loyalists by pre-Revolutionary mobs, "Grey Champion" investigated another fact about Americans' ancestors.  (The "Champion" was a member of the Puritan court which condemned Charles I to be executed in the English Civil War [1649], a man who fled to the colonies to escape Royalist revenge after the Restoration of Charles II in 1660, and who later came out of hiding in the woods to warn colonists of an impending attack by Native Americans.) In "YGB," Hawthorne visits the most painful portion of his own family's heritage, the participation of an ancestor, John Hathorne, as one of the two presiding judges in the 1692 trial and execution of the Salem "witches."  (Hawthorne added the "w" to his own last name.)  As in the case of "MK,MM"'s magazine publication, "YGB"'s 1835 appearance would have referred to relatively recent events in readers' pasts.

Strategy 1--read what was published immediately before the story: Surprise!  Nothing occurs before "Young Goodman Brown."  It is the first story readers encounter.  It contrasts enormously with the non-fiction travel narrative which follows, but has some weird resemblances to the melodramatic poem.

Strategy 2--read what was published immediately after the story:  "Random Leaves.  No. 1.  From a Voyager's Common-Place-Book," a travel narrative about sailing to the West Indies for a cargo of sugar, rum, and molasses (260-65), and John Greenleaf Whittier's "Mogg Megone," a lurid poem about an English colonist pursued through the New England wilderness by "Indians" and a Jesuit priest (266-73).  What kind of effect would be produced by the editor's decision to take readers from the bleak conclusion of "YGB" and its quasi-allegorical style to the cheery, almost amoral narrative of the "Voyager" headed to the Caribbean plantations where slaves make white men rich?  How does Whittier's poem's treatment of "Indians" and "Jesuits" relate to "YGB"'s use of "Indians" and figures of religious authority?  Something quite unusual is happening here, but it seems like it might be a cultural trend.

        You also can check the title pages and introductions of the rest of the collection to determine the topics of other stories that occur in the same issue with "YGB."  Do any of them deal with pre-Revolutionary events?  Do any have NH's darkly skeptical view of colonial America?  How many are printed anonymously, and what does that suggest about the American literary marketplace in the 1830s?