FROM THE LIBRARY OF THE HAWTHORNE WOMEN (see also individual titles)
From the Library of the Hawthorne Women
A stunning collection of 11 books owned by Nathaniel Hawthorne’s wife, Sophia Peabody Hawthorne, and their two daughters, Una and Rose. Nearly every copy bears a personal inscription, as many were given as gifts or to commemorate special occasions. Judging by the marginalia and general wear to many of these books, it is clear that the Hawthorne women were avid and thoughtful readers. This collection offers an intimate glimpse into the minds of the three most significant women in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s life.
Sophia Peabody Hawthorne (1809-1871) grew up one block away from Nathaniel Hawthorne in Salem, MA, but did not become his wife until she was 32, a relatively old age to get married by the standards of the time. Because of some persistent health issues, she was hesitant to get married, but by all accounts, her years spent with Nathaniel were very happy ones. She bore three children—daughters Una and Rose, and a son, Julian. In her lifetime, she worked as a painter and illustrator and also published her journals and a few articles. Seven years after Nathaniel’s death in 1864, she succumbed to typhoid pneumonia while living in London.
Una Hawthorne (1844-1877) led a somewhat troubled life. In 1858, while the family was living in Italy, she contracted malaria and typhus and required constant care from her mother for several months. In 1867, she became engaged to Storrow Higginson, but for reasons unknown, the engagement was broken off. A few years later, she and younger sister Rose both fell in love with a Columbia student named George Lathrop. Lathrop chose Rose and when the two married in 1871, Una became deeply depressed and was committed to an asylum for a brief period of time. She eventually recovered and reconciled with her sister, moving in with her and Lathrop in New York while Rose was pregnant. While living with Rose, Una met and got engaged to Albert Webster, Jr., but he died at sea before the two could marry. Una then entered a convent and died soon after.
Rose Hawthorne Lathrop (1851-1926) traveled all over the world as part of her education, studying in London, Rome, Paris, and Florence. In 1871, she married writer George Parsons Lathrop and both converted to Catholicism. Their only son, Francis, died at the age of five in 1881. The couple moved to New York City and soon separated, and after George’s death in 1898, Rose became a nun and was henceforth known as Mother Mary Alphonsa. She founded the Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne, as well as St. Rose’s Free Home for Incurable Cancer on the Lower East Side. She received an honorary A.M. from Bowdoin College in 1925, one year before her death. In 2003, she was canonized in the Catholic Church.
Though originally Sophia and Una were buried in London, now all three women are buried alongside Nathaniel in the Hawthorne family plot in Concord, MA.
All boxed uniformly in specially made cloth slipcases.
(#10031-10039, #10092-10093)
Sophia’s Annotated Bible
The Holy Bible, Containing the Old and New Testaments, translated out of the original tongues, and with the former translations diligently compared and revised. Boston: Carter, Hendee, and Co., 1832.
Thick 12mo.; marbled endpapers; 2” rectangular piece cut out from the middle of the first blank; marbled edges; crimson morocco, stamped in gilt.
A Peabody-Hawthorne family bible, inscribed by Sophia Peabody Hawthorne on the title page using her maiden name, Sophia A. Peabody / July 13, 1833. With a quotation from Proverbs—chapter fourteen, number 10—on the second blank: The heart knoweth its own bitterness, & a stranger intermeddleth not with its joy. With extensive marginalia throughout mostly in Sophia’s hand, although there are some passages, including one on pg. 655, which bear a strong resemblance to that of her husband. Sophia also made notes in faint pencil on the Old Testament and New Testament blanks. In the Book of Job, Sophia wrote at the bottom of one page, “Oh that one would write my cause in a book (614), and several significant markings appear in Proverbs—three exclamation points next to Verse 20 (“The poor is hated even of his own neighbor: but the rich hath many friends”) and Verse 29 (“He that is slow to wrath is of great understanding: but he that is hasty of spirit exalteth folly”) is underlined twice. On the front endpapers under the heading “Numbers embrace all natural Philosophy” is a 29 line entry in an unknown hand—perhaps Elizabeth Peabody, perhaps Hawthorne, whose handwriting this resembles. Sophia was raised in a very religious home; her mother was a devout Unitarian. From the markings in her Bible, it is clear that Sophia took her faith very seriously and studied her Bible from an intellectual as well as spiritual standpoint.
Rose’s Copy of Her Aunt’s Book
[Peabody, Elizabeth Palmer]. Holiness; or, The Legend of St. George: A Tale from Spencer’s Faerie Queene, by a mother. Boston: Published by E.R. Broaders, 1836.
12mo.; foxed; brown cloth; dampstained; printed label to spine; chipped.
First edition. A presentation copy, inscribed on the front endpaper: Rose Hawthorne / from Aunt E.P.P. / June 28th / 1860 / Welcome home / my darling! The inscription date marks the return home of the Hawthornes from several years abroad. Aunt Elizabeth has added an Erratum at the close of the preface: Sansjoy should be read instead of Sansloy in the IVth chapter, and indeed, she has made this correction throughout chapter four.
One of only two prose works by Peabody, Holiness is her attempt to make the stories in Spencer’s Faerie Queene accessible for young readers. The Transcendentalist and educational reformer clearly believed that the message and values behind The Faerie Queene were vital for children to understand as part of their Christian education. In her preface, Peabody writes of the “profound philosophy of moral life” and “exhaustless mine of thought” which pervade Spencer’s text (vi). Following in the successful tradition of Lamb’s Tales of Shakespeare and James Cowden Clarke’s Tales of Chaucer, Peabody retells the chivalric legend of St. George in simplified prose, including a few of her own footnotes to make the allegory more clear.
To Una from the Fields
a woman writes on the women in the lives of writers
Mrs. [Anna] Jameson. Memoirs of the Loves of the Poets. Biographical sketches of Women celebrated in ancient and modern poetry. From the last London edition. Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1863.
16mo.; frontispiece drawing of Dante’s Beatrice; tissue guard; all edges gilt; blue cloth, elaborately stamped in blind and gilt; very light wear to extremities.
From the lovely Ticknor and Fields Blue and Gold series. Signed on the first blank, Una Hawthorne. Una spent several weeks with Annie and James T. Fields in Boston in early 1863. It is easy to imagine that the romantic Una would have been thrilled to acquire this book about the women who inspired some of the great love poems over the centuries as a gift from her host. The absence of book dealer/shop tickets or price markings or price notations of any kind lend support to this belief.
The Hawthornes were well aware of the writings of the prolific British writer and art critic, Mrs. Anna Brownell Murphy Jameson (1793-1860). Not only did the Hawthornes spend time with her in Rome, Nathaniel himself was treated to her opinions on various works of art one afternoon when they sallied forth together. Hawthorne observed that Mrs. Jameson could “read a picture like a book.” Una and her companion/tutor Miss Ada Shepard spent time in Rome quite wrapped up in the writings of Mrs. Jameson.
The book contains biographical sketches of the wives and lovers of great poets including Petrarch, Milton, Chaucer, Donne, Spenser, and Dante. For each woman, Jameson describes how she met the poet in question and includes excerpts of writing she inspired.
Signed by Una
Lord’s Physiology. (London: Harrison and Co., 1839?)
12mo.; title page absent; library “rules” label to front pastedown; illustrated; some foxing towards the rear; three quarter-morocco, marbled boards; well worn.
Edition unknown, but not the first, as indicated by a note in the front of the book which explains that errata from the first edition have been corrected in this edition. Signed by Una Hawthorne, Hawthorne, on the front endpaper, facing the “rules” affixed to the front pastedown by the library from which this volume was apparently deaccessioned. Illegible stamp of said library on verso of front endpaper.
A scientific text, with chapters on the various systems of the body (digestion, respiration, circulation, etc) and a lengthy introduction on the historical origins of physiology. The author writes in the preface that physiology should be studied as “a science of facts” as opposed to the way it has been treated in the past, as “a science of opinions.”
The Peabody Women Remember Hawthorne
Hawthorne, Nathaniel. Transformation: or, the Romance of Monte Beni. Copyright edition. In two volumes. Leipzig: Bernhard Tauchnitz, 1860.
2 vols., 12mo.; extra-illustrated; lightly foxed; marbled endpapers; red edge-stain; cream paper-covered boards, stamped in gilt; lightly soiled.
Copyright edition. A Hawthorne family extra-illustrated two volume set of the Tauchnitz edition of The Marble Faun, purchased in Rome by Elizabeth Palmer Peabody in 1868 and given to her sister, Sophia Peabody Hawthorne, after Nathaniel’s death. Elizabeth began to write her sister’s maiden name—Peabody—in the inscription, and then overwrote it: Sophia Amelia [P] Hawthorne / from her Sister Elizabeth / who illustrated it for her in Rome -- / May 1868. A labor of love: Elizabeth added about 15 photographic illustrations throughout, each mounted on a heavier paper stock, and had them specially bound in to the text with cream paper-covered boards with a triple rule stamped in gilt on the covers and spines, and with the spine further stamped, simply, “The Marble Faun / 1” and “The Marble Faun / 2.”
Sophia has made notes throughout:
Volume I
p. 5, Sophia’s hand in pencil suggesting “rests upon his hips,” in lieu of “hangs carelessly by his side.
p. 34, pencil lines in margins
p. 78, pencil tick to one line in margin
p. 142, pencil tick to one line in margin
p. 180, photo partially shaded in
p. 181, satin ribbon book mark
Volume II
Table of Contents, added in ink, “Sodoma’s Christ—123,” indicating where a description of that work appears
p.26, pencil, suggesting “hitherto” instead of “therefore”
p. 255, ink, changing “proposed to him let him blood” to “proposed to him to let blood.”
For a similar set, see Clark’s Nathaniel Hawthorne at Auction, p. 371, #442.
Annotated by Sophia
Ellis, Sir Henry. The Elgin and Phigaleian Marbles of the Classical Ages, in the British Museum. In two volumes. London: Nattali and Bond, [1846].
2 vols.; 12mo.; illustrated; green cloth, stamped in gilt; endpapers lightly foxed; title pages darkened; spines sunned; light wear to extremities.
Second edition; the first edition was published by Charles Knight in 1833 and did not include the author’s name. Signed in purple ink in three places, Sophia Hawthorne: at the start of the text in volumes one and two, and on the front endpaper of volume two. With occasional marginalia in Sophia’s hand maintaining a dialogue with the author: at the foot of page two in volume two, she has added, in faint pencil, from a religious reverence, of course, and at the top of page 5, above the illustration of another sculpture, Cephalus, the gateway of the beauty of Heaven, bridegroom of Aurora, watching the rising of Hyperion. On page 48 of volume one she wrote, But not different peoples through different forms of worship.
Sophia—or perhaps her brother and fellow home-school student Julian—added, in pencil on the recto of the rear endpaper of volume one, a sketch of the layout of the Parthenon that corresponds to the description on pages 22-23. In volume two a reader “completed” in pencil the heads and noses of two reclining figures on pages 5 and 6.
These texts were no doubt useful for Sophia, the artist, as instructive tools for the home-educated children, and are excellent examples of Sophia’s lifelong interest in classical art—and concrete evidence of the fulfillment of her dream of spending time in front of “the real item” in Europe. She was quite talented—a fine copyist and an excellent writer who was encouraged by her husband to focus primarily on domestic duties. The three Hawthorne children, Una, Julian, and Rose, had very little formal schooling outside the home, and there is little doubt that this copy of Lord Elgin’s famous booty was used as a text for the children.
Annotated by Una
“I always thought this was from ‘Hamlet’!”
Shakespeare, William. The Plays and Poems of William Shakespeare. Printed from the text of J. Payne Collier, Esq. F.S.A., with the life and portrait of the poet. Complete in seven volumes. Vol. VI. Leipzig: Bernhard Tauchnitz, 1844.
12mo.; publisher’s vellum, stamped in gilt; purple morocco spine label; covers rubbed; a well-worn copy.
Signed in ink opposite the title page, Una Hawthorne, and beneath it, in pencil, Beatrix Hawthorne. On the front endpapers, Una has transcribed in pencil, in its entirety, the Milton poem, “On Shakespeare”:
What needs my Shakespeare for his honored bones
To labor of an age in piled stones,
Or that his hallowed relics should be hid
Under a star-y pointing pyramid?
Dear son of memory, great heir of fame,
What need'st thou such weak witness of thy name?
Thou in our wonder and astonishment
Hast built thyself a live-long monument.
For, whilst, to the shame of slow-endeavouring art,
Thy easy numbers flow, and that each heart
Hath from the leaves of thy unvalued3 book
Those Delphic lines with deep impression took,
Then thou our fancy of itself bereaving,
Dost make us marble with too much conceiving,
And so sepúlchred in such pomp dost lie
That kings for such a tomb would wish to die.
Una added a remark in the margin of Othello, at the lines, “Who steals my purse, steals trash… And makes me poor indeed,” commenting, “I always thought that was from ‘Hamlet’!” Light pencil lines appear occasionally throughout the margins of all the plays. This volume contains Hamlet, King Lear, Othello, Antony and Cleopatra, and Cymbeline.
A Gift to Una
Cust, Katherine Isabella, ed. The Booke of the Pylgremage of the Sowle. Translated from the French of Guillaume de Guileville and printed by William Caxton AN. 1483 with illuminations taken from the ms. copy in the British Museum. London: Basil Montagu Pickering, 1859.
Slim 4to.; color, and black and white illustrations; foxed; red cloth, stamped in gilt; edgeworn; lightly rubbed.
A facsmilie of the 1483 manuscript in the British Museum. Publisher’s ad, one leaf, two pages, tipped-in at the front endpapers.
A gift from Katherine Isabella Cust, signed by Una, Hawthorne, on the front pastedown. (“Recd a note from Miss Cust, in reference to the ‘Sowle’s Pilgrimage,’ which she presents to me.” French and Italian Notebooks, Vol. XIV, p. 694, 895)
Guillaume de Guileville, who spent 39 years in a Cistercian abbey, wrote three major works in his lifetime: Pèlerinage de la Vie Humaine (The Pilgrimage of Man), Le Pèlerinage de l’Âme (The Pilgrimage of the Soul), and Le Pèlerinage de Jhesucrist (The Pilgrimage of Jesus Christ). Cust’s edition of Pilgrimage of the Soul contains only portions of Caxton’s full translation. In the story, a pilgrim falls asleep and dreams that he has died. In his dream, an angel takes him to heaven, where his soul is put on trial before Lady Justice, who sentences him to expiate his sins in purgatory. The angel also takes the pilgrim to see hell and in the end, explains the holy trinity to the pilgrim, right before he wakes up.
From the Library of the Hawthornes’ Home-school
Saint-Pierre, J.H. Bernardin. Paul et Virginie. Avec vocabulaire. New York: Roe Lockwood & Son, Librairie Américaine et Étrangère, (1852).
12mo.; tan cloth, red cloth spine; rubbed.
A later edition. Publisher’s ads printed on front and rear endpapers. Signed Hawthorne on the blank opposite the title page by Una. Though this copy may have belonged to Una, we know that Sophia was fond of the famous story; she references it more than once in her notebooks written during her time in Cuba.
First published in 1787, on the eve of the French Revolution, Paul et Virginie is the story of two best friends who fall in love, but die together tragically in a shipwreck. The novel has a strong philosophical angle as well, for Paul and Virginia grow up in an idyllic equalized society; all the inhabitants of their hometown of Mauritius live on equal plots of land and share all their possessions, thus eliminating class distinctions.
To Rose from her Mother
edited by a woman
The Imitation of Christ: De Imitatione Christi Libri Quatuor. Ad fidem optimorum librorum et praecipue vetustissimi codicis de advocatis accurate editi. Accedunt preces missae adjuncto precationum delectu in usum confitentium et commuicantium. Curavit Joannes Hrabiéta, Presbyter eccles, examinator synod, director et professor progymnasii cathol. Dresdensis. Altera edition stereotypa ornamentis illustrate priore emendatior. Cum approbatione RRmi Consistorii cathol. In regno Saxoniae. Hilpertshusiae & Lipsiae Sumtibus Ferd. Kesselring. 1851.
12mo.; illustrated; occasional foxing; black cloth; extremities worn; fragile.
The earliest edition by this publisher; subsequent editions appeared in 1852 and 1855. Inscribed on the front endpaper: Rose Hawthorne, / From her beloved / Mother. Occasional pencil lines in the margins. An interesting volume, given Rose’s conversion to Catholicism as an adult. On Sptember 9th, 1856, Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote, “We breakfasted at Mr. Spiers’ house; and then my wife and I walked a little about the town, and bought Thomas à Kempis, in a French translation, and also in English; Sophia being of the opinion it will be particularly good for Una to read” (English Notebooks, Vol XXII, p. 146). They returned to Mr. Spier’s house and he insisted on the well known photo. (“Afterwards, when we were all come, he arranged us under a tree, in the garden…and stained the glass with our figures and faces, in the twinkling of an eye; not my wife’s face, however, for she turned it away, and left only a pattern of her bonnet and gown…But the rest of us were all caught, to the life, and I was really a little startled at recognizing myself so apart from myself, and done so quickly too” (146-7). Sophia waxes poetic about a Priory they visited the following April in York: “How well the old abbots and priors knew where to crystallize their magnificent ideas of state, repose, and worship into stone! Thomas à Kempis might here have written his divine sentences, each one so like a translucent drop of that singing, shining fall—including also the infinite serenity of lawns, and the slumbering sunshine’s dim gold…” (Sophia Hawthorne, Notes in England and Italy, p. 16—also, English Notebooks, Vol XXII, p. 609). As the adult Rose not only embraced the Roman Catholic Church but founded an order of Sisters, this is an intriguing, if not prophetic early gift from her mother.
A stellar association copy of a very rare book; OCLC locates only one copy.
From the Library of Hawthorne’s Sister
Trelawny, E.J. Recollections of the Last Days of Shelley and Byron. Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1858.
8vo.; light foxing to preliminaries; brown cloth, stamped in blind and gilt; extremities worn; spine frayed.
First American edition. Signed in pencil on the half-title: Elizabeth M. Hawthorne, with a clipping affixed to the first blank—a note by William Swift, the late Lord Byron’s cobbler, discussing his boots and his infirmities of foot, ankle, and leg—beneath which is Elizabeth’s transcription of a Browning verse: “And did you once see Shelley plain? And did he stop and speak to you? And did you speak to him again?—How strange it seems—and new!” / Browning. / 1841.
Vernon Loggins refers to Elizabeth’s use of this book in The Hawthornes (New York: Columbia University Press, 1951), pp. 301-302:
When she read Harriet Beecher Stowe’s claim that Lord Byron was guilty of incest with his half sister Augusta Leigh, she studied the charge with a lawyer’s precision. Having arrived at a conclusion, she wrote,
In Trelawny’s Recollections of Byron and Shelley, there is an unfinished letter to Mrs. Leigh which Trelawney found in Byron’s papers after his death. The letter is entirely inconsistent with Mrs. Stowe’s story. I think it could not possibly have been written if what Mrs. Stowe says had been true. Mrs. Leigh seems to have been the medium of communication between Byron and his wife. Mrs. Stowe is an author by profession, therefore the plain truth is not to be looked for from her. She must write what people will read, and in her mind she habitually mixes up fact and fiction. I dare say she does not know them apart. All the time she was in England she was thinking of making a book, or as many books as she could. Then she never followed Dr. Johnson’s advice, perhaps never heard of it, ‘Clear your mind of cant.’ Her Byron article is full of cant, and, besides all the rest, she is a Beecher. And what Beecher can live without excitement—without creating a sensation? As to Lady Byron, she appears to be one of those people who cannot discriminate between sins, but think one as likely to be committed as another—or rather, who think every departure from their own particular rule of right is a sin so enormous that the person guilty of it would hesitate at nothing.
Trelawny was closely acquainted with both Shelley and Byron and was one of the witnesses at Shelley’s cremation. However, many of the “recollections” recorded in this book have since been proven false by other Shelley and Byron biographers.
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