Add MS 44889-44890

Original autograph MS. of the novel as 'rewritten and prepared for the press' in 1859 during his stay in England (on the basis of a sketch prepared while in Italy) and completed on 8th November of that year (see C. Ticknor, Hawthorne and his Publisher, 1913, p. 225), although the preface is dated 'Leamington, October 15 1859' (cf. Add. MS. 44889, f. 6). The later postscript is of course wanting (added in 1860 after first publication). The work was published in 1860 simultaneously by Ticknor and Fields in Boston under the present title and by Smith, Elder and Co. in London, under the title Transformation: or the Romance of Monte Beni, a title which was imposed by the English publisher and which was disliked by Hawthorne (see Add. MS. 44889, f. i and cf. Ticknor, op. cit., pp. 230-237). In the middle of the chapter headed 'Donatello's Bust' (vol. ii, chap. 14; Add. MS. 44890, f. 62) Hawthorne adopted the name 'Kenyon' for the character hitherto called 'Graydon' and altered the text retrospectively. Cf. Brit. Mus. Quart., xi, 1936-1937, pp. 79-80. Paper; Quarto. A.D. 1859. The MS. was presented in 1860 by Hawthorne to his friend, Henry Arthur Bright (see the former's letter, dated 10 Mar. 1860, inserted in Add. MS. 44889, ff. i-iib, and cf. note on f. 6b), who supplied the present vellum binding and the delicately executed water-colour title-pages representing a fragmentary slab of marble bearing on it the title and author's name in the form of an inscription, the title-pages being apparently the work of John Eliot Hodgkin (see his letter to Bright, 19 Sept. 1860, in Add. MS. 44889, f. iii). Also inserted in Add. MS. 44889 are:-

(1) letter from Hawthorne to his English publishers, Smith, Elder and Co., 24 Mar. 1860, directing them to send part of the MS. to Bright, f. 7;-

(2) engraved portrait of Hawthorne, after C.G. Thompson, 1851, f. iv. A reprint of the article 'Henry Bright: In Memoriam', originally contributed [1884] by Richard Monckton Milnes, 1st Baron Houghton, to the Miscellanies of the Philobiblon Society, vol. xv, 1877-1884, and presented by the donor with the present MS., is now preserved separately as Departmental Pamphlet 323. Presented by Mrs Elizabeth Phebe Merivale in memory of her father, Henry Arthur Bright.