Passages from the French and Italian Notebooks, Comple

Passages from the French and Italian Notebooks is the published version of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s personal journals from his European travels in France and Italy in the late 1850s, after his Liverpool consular service had ended. The notebooks were published posthumously in 1872 under the editorial supervision of his widow Sophia Peabody Hawthorne, and the Complete edition gathers the full surviving notebook entries from this particular travel period.

The Hawthornes had spent significant time in France and Italy in the late 1850s, with the travels providing both personal pleasure and the source material that would shape Hawthorne’s last completed novel The Marble Faun, published in 1860. The Italian setting of The Marble Faun and the wider engagement with Italian art, architecture, and culture that the novel works through grew directly out of the experience that the French and Italian notebooks document.

The entries in the notebooks include detailed observations of the various French and Italian cities and towns that the Hawthornes visited, careful descriptions of the major artworks they encountered in the various museums and churches, reflections on the cultural and political situation of mid nineteenth century France and Italy, and the kind of personal and family observations that the journal format naturally produced. Hawthorne’s responses to the major Italian art treasures are particularly valuable as primary sources for understanding how nineteenth century American writers engaged with the European cultural heritage.

The Complete edition gives readers access to the full surviving material, with the various entries running across the period of the European travels in their original chronological order.

For Hawthorne completists, for students of nineteenth century American travel writing, for readers interested in The Marble Faun and its sources, or for those interested in how American writers of the period engaged with European art and culture, Passages from the French and Italian Notebooks is essential.