Ordinary Mysteries: Common Journal of Nathaniel and Sophia Hawthorne, 1842-1843, Memoirs, American Philosophical Society (vol. 256)

From the summer of 1842 through the fall of 1843, Nathaniel and Sophia Hawthorne kept a common journal of their daily lives in a notebook. The journal records the ordinary events and activities that occupied them as newlyweds: walks through the countryside around Concord, appraisals of their new home, encounters with neighbors (among them Emerson, Fuller, and Thoreau), descriptions of the weather and the changing seasons — all material that Hawthorne would later draw on for the preface to h...