San Antonio College Library

The American Notebooks follows chronological order, tracing Hawthorne's development over a period of eighteen years. The individual entries, however, are quite random in their makeup and contain adages, animal folklore, and biblical references that captivated Hawthorne. Observations of people whom he saw in the streets of nineteenth century Salem, Boston, and North Adams, Massachusetts, are mixed with flights of fancy that occurred to Hawthorne as...