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<Text id=HawGabl> <Author>Hawthorne, Nathaniel</Author> <Title>The House of the Seven Gables</Title> <Edition>Novels. Library of America. New York: Literary Classics of the U.S., 1983</Edition> <Date>1851</Date> <body> <loc><locdoc>HawGabl351</locdoc><milestone n=351> <div0 type=chapter n=Preface> <l> <i>Preface</i> </l> <p>When a writer calls his work a Romance, it need hardly be observed that he wishes to claim a certain latitude, both as to its fashion and material, which he would not have felt himself entitled to assume, had he professed to be writing a Novel. The latter form of composition is presumed to aim at a very minute fidelity, not merely to the possible, but to the probable and ordinary course of man's experience. The former -- while, as a work of art, it must rigidly subject itself to laws, and while it sins unpardonably, so far as it may swerve aside from the truth of the human heart -- has fairly a right to present that truth under circum . . .
