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1. Scarlet Letter -- Nathaniel Hawthorne
   Although commonly called a novel, The Scarlet Letter is actually a romance. Hawthorne makes this distinction because at the time he was writing, novels were supposed to deal with realistic representations of human experiences or external truths. Romances, on the other hand, were concerned with internal truths, or "truths of the human heart," as Hawthorne states in his Preface to The House of the Seven Gables. Romances, therefore, allowed the author to deviate from reality in favor of imagination. Thus The Scarlet Letter is not an historical novel about Puritan Boston, but a romance set 200 years before Hawthorne's time in which he tells a tale that may have occurred, given some historical facts and many insights into human nature.
2. Dorothy Gish -- Ohio Sen
   On June 4, 1968, actress Dorothy Gish - a Massillon, Ohio, native - died in Rapallo, Italy. She was the daughter of James Lee Gish, a grocery-store clerk from Springfield, Ohio, and actress Mary Robinson McConnell of Urbana, Ohio. She was the granddaughter of Ohio Sen. Samuel Robinson.
3. Edgar Allan Poe -- Americas
   Edgar Allan Poe belonged to the first, struggling generation of professional writers in America. Ralph Waldo Emerson had his private wealth, Nathaniel Hawthorne had his job at the Customs House, and Louisa May Alcott had her best seller, but these were rare comforts. In any case, they were not for one as dramatic, driven and self-doomed as Poe.
4. Cary Grant -- New York
   The portrait of Cary Grant in the stamp art, an oil painting by Michael J. Deas of New Orleans, La., is based on a black-and-white publicity photograph made in 1951 or 1952 by Warner Bros. photographer Bert Six.
5. Scarlet Letter -- Hester Prynne
   The Scarlet Letter, published in 1850, is an American novel written by Nathaniel Hawthorne and is generally considered to be his [M]agnum opus. Set in Puritanical Boston in the seventeenth century, it tells the story of Hester Prynne, who gives birth after committing adultery, refuses to name the father, and struggles to create a new life of repentance and dignity. Throughout the novel, Hawthorne explores the issues of grace, legalism, sin, and guilt.
6. Brook Farm -- Building
   Nathaniel Hawthorne was a founding member of Brook Farm and presented a fictionalized portrait of it in his novel, The Blithedale Romance. (He acknowledged the resemblance in his introduction, saying "in the 'Blithedale' of this volume, many readers will probably suspect a faint and not very faithful shadowing of Brook Farm, in Roxbury, which (now a little more than ten years ago) was occupied and cultivated by a company of socialists.)" Some have seen a resemblance between Margaret Fuller and Hawthorne's fictional character Zenobia. In the novel, a visitor—a writer like Hawthorne—finds that hard farm labor is not conducive to intellectual creativity:
7. Brook Farm -- Brook Farm Institute
   The Brook Farm Institute for Agriculture and Education was the name the Brook Farmers chose for their community in 1841. It referred to the way they chose to unite labor and culture and to the way that they chose to earn their living. The transcendentalists perceived farming to be the occupation most favorable to personal growth because of its distance from the market, proximity to nature, and promise of a subsistence to protect moral independence. The Brook Farmers, unlike the member of Fruitlands, did ... sell their milk, vegetables, and hay and kept their stock dividends low in order to keep enough capital to expand production. In one sense, the Brook Farmers operated something like a boarding school where the students paid in cash unless they worked on the farm. Furthermore, when the Brook Farmers admitted Lewis Ryckman, he initiated a new thriving business of shoemaking in the community.
8. Symbolism in Literature
   Russian Symbolism really flourished in the first decade of the 20th century. Many new talents began to publish verse written in the Symbolist vein. These writers were especially indebted to the philosopher Vladimir Solovyov. The scholar Vyacheslav Ivanov, whose interests lay in ancient poetry, returned from Italy to establish a Dionysian club in St Petersburg. His self-proclaimed principle was to engraft "archaic Miltonic diction" to Russian poetry. Maximilian Voloshin, known best for his poetry about the Russian revolution, opened a poetic salon at his villa in the Crimea.
9. Brook Farm -- George Ripley
   While Brook Farm guaranteed equality in education and labor, membership in the association depended on ownership of property. Brook Farm was organized as a joint stock company. The price of a share was $500.00. Upon purchase, a member could then have the right to vote on community policies. (The second edition of the Articles of Association, drawn up in 1842, allowed a person to become a member by the vote of the associates.) The members of Brook Farm believed that private property was necessary for individual integrity. Ripley wrote a letter to a reform society in New York explaining this principle.
10. Franklin Pierce -- Franklin Pierce College
    Franklin Pierce was the son of Benjamin Pierce, a revolutionary war hero who was twice elected governor of New Hampshire. Franklin attended Bowdoin College, where he became friendly with Nathaniel Hawthorne, who later wrote his biography. At age 23 he became a lawyer and began his own spectacular rise in state Democratic politics, becoming speaker of the state legislature at age 26. He then served several terms in Congress, where he strongly supported the policies of President Andrew Jackson, especially the veto of the national bank. He became a U.S. senator at age 36. Pierce served in the Mexican-American War as a brigadier general of volunteers from his state under the overall command of General Winfield Scott and was injured at the Battle of Contreras when he fell off his horse.

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