After leaving Bowdoin Hawthorne returned to Salem, where he passed the
next twelve years of his life. Here he produced, from time to time,
stories and sketches which found their way to the periodicals and won
for him a narrow reputation. But the years which a man usually devotes
to his best work were spent by Hawthorne in a contented half-dream of
a great future, for good as is some of the work produced at this time,
it never would have won for the author the highest place in American
literature. These stories and sketches were afterward collected and
published under the title _Twice-Told Tales_ and _The Snow Image_.
Full of the grace and beauty of Hawthorne's style, they were the best
imaginative work yet produced in America, but in speaking of them
Hawthorne himself says that in this result of twelve years there is
little to show for its thought and industry.