INTRODUCTORY NOTE TO THE DOLLIVER ROMANCE
_ In "The Dolliver Romance," only three chapters of which the author lived
to complete, we get an intimation as to what would have been the ultimate
form given to that romance founded on the Elixir of Life, for which
"Septimius Felton" was the preliminary study. Having abandoned this study,
and apparently forsaken the whole scheme in 1862, Hawthorne was moved to
renew his meditation upon it in the following year； and as the plan of the
romance had now seemingly developed to his satisfaction, he listened to
the publisher‘s proposal that it should begin its course as a serial story
in the "Atlantic Monthly" for January, 1864--the first instance in which
he had attempted such a mode of publication.
But the change from England to Massachusetts had been marked by, and had
perhaps in part caused, a decline in his health. Illness in his family,
the depressing and harrowing effect of the Civil War upon his
sensibilities, and anxiety

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