Nathaniel Hawthorne
Published: 2017-10-25
Total Pages: 640
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Excerpt from The Dolliver Romance; Fanshawe; And, Septimius Felton: With an Appendix Containing the Ancestral Footstep The manuscript of the unfinished Dolliver Ro mance lay upon his coffin during the funeral ser vices at Concord, but, contrary to the impression some times entertained on this point, was not buried with him. It is preserved in the Concord Public Library. The first chapter was published in the Atlantic as an isolated portion, soon after his death; and subse quently the second chapter, which he had been unable to revise, appeared in the same periodical. Between this and the third fragment there is a gap, for bridg ing which no material was found among his papers; but, after hesitating for several years, Mrs. Hawthorne copied and placed in the publishers' hands that final portion, which, with the two parts previously printed, constitutes the whole of what Hawthorne had put into tangible form. Hawthorne had purposed prefixing a sketch of Tho reau, because, from a tradition which he told me about this house of mine, I got the idea of a deathless man, which is now taking a shape very different from the original one. This refers to the tradition men tioned in the editor's note to Septimius Felton, and forms a link in the interesting chain of evidence con necting that romance with the Dolliver Romance. With the plan respecting Thoreau he combined the idea of writing an autobiographical preface, wherein The Wayside was to be described, after the man ner of his Introduction to the Mosses from an Old Manse but, so far as is known, nothing of this was ever actually committed to paper. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.