Nathaniel Hawthorne 
Passages from the American Note-Books [EPUB ebook] 

This is the annotated edition including a rare and extensive biographical essay on the author, as well as an introductory to the book written by George Parsons Lathrop.
The series of passages from the ‘American Note-Books’ covers the space of eighteen years, almost to a day; the extracts running from June 15, 1835, to June 9, 1853; and in a detached way it represents the main part of Hawthorne’s career throughout the period of his rise from obscurity to fame, purely as a growth of American soil and conditions, before he had ever set foot in Europe.