1851The House of the Seven Gables
Nathaniel Hawthorne
The gabled house is real. It still stands on Turner Street by Salem harbour, the Turner-Ingersoll Mansion that Hawthorne knew and that is preserved today as the House of the Seven Gables museum. Around it the novel keeps its bearings in Salem: the little shop cut into the front gable, the garden and Maule's Well behind, the arched window over the by-street Hawthorne renames Pyncheon Street, and the railway on which Hepzibah and Clifford flee the town. The interiors are inferred to the real house, and Pyncheon Street is Hawthorne's name for a real Salem street, which is what the certainty labels are for.
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