A thick and darksome veil

the long version

Much has been written on Nathaniel Hawthorne's novels and tales, but his sketches, prefaces, and essays have been generally overlooked. Thomas R. Moore considers these lesser-known works to be the central battleground for Hawthorne's struggle to balance "the demands of his readership for a sentimental and nostalgic style and his own demands for a more truthful discourse and subject matter." This tension is a major concern of any publishing writer, but it was particularly relevant for the writers of the American Renaissance: Emerson eloquently distinguished between the "partial and noisy readers of the hour" and "an eternal public." As they sought to forge a literary tradition, American writers met with the artistic obstacle of the public preference for sentimental novels and stories of the past.