The second issue of The Nathaniel Hawthorne News- letter (Fall 1975) published a list of the Hawthorne Society’s founding members. That list included Rita Gollin, a distinguished Hawthorne scholar whose achievements and camaraderie I am happy to celebrate in this brief tribute. I first met Rita in 1986 at the Society’s summer meeting at Bowdoin College. Along with several other established Hawthorne scholars (David Kesterson, Lea Newman, John Idol), she went out of her way to make me feel welcome at my first Hawthorne Society meeting, and I always looked forward to seeing her every other summer, as well as annually at MLA and ALA meetings.
Rita earned a PhD in American literature from the University of Minnesota in 1961. Her dissertation, “Dream and Reverie in the Writings of Nathaniel Hawthorne,” provided the foundation for her first book, Nathaniel Hawthorne and the Truth of Dreams (Louisiana State UP, 1979). She...
