Hawthorne, Nathaniel

Our Old Home: A Series of English Sketches. Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1863

In 8s (7 1/8 x 4 3/8 in.; 180 x 100 mm). Half-title, dedication leaf and prefatory letter to Franklin Pierce; second printing (without the Ticknor & Fields ads on p. 399), marginal foxing and staining affecting first third of text, offsetting in gutter of pp. 72–73. Publisher's brown cloth blocked in blind on covers, spine lettered gilt, brown-coated endpapers; joints and gilt lettering rubbed, a few nicks to spine ends. Quarter black calf folding case with cotton ties.

Adams Treat (presentation inscription by Franklin Pierce). Acquisition: MacManus Company

BAL 7626 ; Clark A 1.24.1.a

First American edition, second printing, inscribed by Franklin Pierce, to whom Hawthorne dedicated this work.  The inscription on the flyleaf reads: "For | Hon Adams Treat | from his friend | Franklin Pierce | Novr 23, 1863." Pierce had been Hawthorne's classmate at Bowdoin College where they became lifelong friends. Hawthorne had written a campaign biography for Pierce in 1852. With Pierce's election as President, Hawthorne was rewarded in 1853 with the position of United States consul in Liverpool, which his wife Sophia described as "second in dignity only to the Embassy in London." His publisher was concerned that the dedication and warm personal letter would ruin the sale of the book.  Fields concurred with the harsh opinion of  Hawthorne's friend and neighbor Ralph Waldo Emerson that Hawthorne was "unlucky in having for a friend a man who cannot be befriended; whose miserable administration admits but one excuse, imbecility. Pierce was either the worse, or he was the worst, or he was the weakest, of all our Presidents" (quoted by Mellow in Nathaniel Hawthorne in His Times, p. 564).