Twenty Days with Julian & Little Bunny by Papa

Nathaniel Hawthorne was born in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1804. After graduating from Bowdoin College in 1825, he returned to Salem, where he wrote historical sketches and allegorical tales, as well as a novel, Fanshawe, which was published anonymously in 1828. Hawthorne’s first book of stories, Twice-Told Tales, appeared in 1837. His marriage to Sophia Peabody, in 1842, led to a move to Concord, after which he wrote the stories gathered in Mosses from an Old Manse and The Snow-Image, and Other Twice-Told Tales, and the novels The Scarlet Letter, The House of the Seven Gables, and The Blithedale Romance. During these same years Hawthorne also spent time in the Berkshires (the scene of Twenty Days with Julian & Little Bunny), where he struck up a friendship with his young admirer Herman Melville. Hawthorne’s last novel, The Marble Faun, was published in 1860. Paul Auster was born on February 3, 1947, in Newark, New Jersey. He received a B.A. and a M.A. in English and Comparative Literature from Columbia University. In addition to his career as a writer, Auster has been a census taker, tutor, merchant seaman, little-league baseball coach, and a telephone operator. He started his writing career as a translator. He soon gained popularity for the detective novels that make up his New York Trilogy. His other works include The Invention of Solitude; Leviathan; Moon Palace; Facing the Music; In the Country of Last Things; The Music of Chance; Mr. Vertigo; and The Brooklyn Follies. His latest novels are entitled, Invisible and Sunset Park. In addition to his novels, Auster has written screenplays and directed several films. He is the recipient of a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and a French Prix Medicis for Foreign Literature.