Wakefield

"I recollect a story told as truth, of a man -- let us call him Wakefield -- who absented himself for a long time, from his wife..."

Nathaniel Hawthorne's brilliant short story, Wakefield, forever established him as a master storyteller.

The premise is strikingly modern: a man who has lived for years with his wife suddenly walks out, moves a short distance away, and never comes back.

In Hawthorne's own words:
"The man, under presence of going a journey, took lodgings in the next street to his...