Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864) was an American novelist, dark romantic, and short story writer. The stories in «A Wonder Book for Girls and Boys» are all stories within a story. The frame story being that a Williams College student,Eustace Bright, is telling these tales to a group of children at Tanglewood, an area in Lenox, Massachusetts. All the tales are modifi ed from the original myths.