Love Letters of Nathaniel Hawthorne (Complete)

In "Hawthorne and His Wife" and "Memories of Hawthorne" both Julian
Hawthorne and his sister, Rose Hawthorne Lathrop, have given citations
from the letters written by Nathaniel Hawthorne to Miss Sophia Peabody
during their years of courtship. These excerpts were free and
irregular, often, and evidently with specific intent, taken out of
order and run together as if for the purpose of illustrating a point
or emphasizing a particular phase of character. While the extracts
were sufficiently numerous for the object desired, and while they gave
an agreeable glimpse of an interesting period of Hawthorne's life,
they were necessarily too fragmentary, too lacking in continuity, to
convey any adequate idea of the simplicity, beauty, humor and
tenderness of the letters, even considered in the matter of a literary
style.

The original letters were acquired by Mr. William K. Bixby of St.
Louis, and, at the urgent request of the Society of the Dofobs, of
which he is a highly esteemed and honored member, turned over to the
society with the understanding that they should be published for
presentation to members only. It was specified also that great care
should be exercised in going over the letters, that no apparent
confidences should be violated and that all private and personal
references, which might wound the feelings of the living or seem to
speak ill of the dead, should be eliminated. It is indeed remarkable
that in the large number of letters presented there was practically
nothing which called for elision, nothing in the lighter mood which
breathed a spirit beyond the innocent limits of good-natured banter.
The work of the editors was consequently easy and grateful, and the
task one of delight.