Rappaccini's Daughter

by Nathaniel Hawthorne

"Rappaccini's Daughter" is a short story by Nathaniel Hawthorne first published in the December 1844 issue of The United States Magazine and Democratic Review, and later in the 1846 collection Mosses from an Old Manse. It is about Giacomo Rappaccini, a medical researcher in medieval Padua who grows a garden of poisonous plants. He brings up his daughter to tend the plants, and she becomes resistant to the poisons, but in the process she herself becomes poisonous to others. The traditional story of a poisonous maiden has been traced back to India, and Hawthorne's version has been adapted in contemporary works. ---------- Also contained in: - [American Fiction](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL14937925W) - [American Short Story](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL8593547W) - [America's Literature](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL3524715W) - [Arbor House Treasury of Horror and the Supernatural](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL15705711W) - [Best American Tales](https://openlibrary.org/works/O…