Dr Grimshawe's Secret: A Romance

Overview:

• Title: Dr Grimshawe's Secret: A Romance
• Author: Nathaniel Hawthorne
• Year: 1883
• Publisher: James R. Osgood and Co.
• Pages: 368
• Binding: Hardcover
• Type: Novel
• Title Reference: Dr Grimshawe's Secret: A Romance
• Notes:
  • Edited with a preface and notes by Julian Hawthorne.
  • Based on two unfinished manuscripts, a first draft (from approximately 1860) and a second draft (from approximately 1860-1861). According to Edward H. Davidson in 1954, "Julian [Hawthorne] decided that he could present a "complete" novel if he employed some editorial sleight of hand. He used the second draft as the basis for his text and ignored those portions of the first draft which the revise overlapped. Then, because the ill-organized first draft contained not only passages of narrative but also long meditative asides, Julian carefully removed those extensive digressions, patched together the remaining narrative sections which brought the tale to a quite illogical conclusion, and added them to the revise. He changed the names of characters in order that people would remain the same throughout the book; intercalated sentences of his own composition in order to conceal the rifts in the tale; and shifted one whole segment of the first draft from the end, where it belonged, to the middle of his edition. What we have hitherto known as Doctor Grimshawe's Secret is in no way the unfinished romance on which Hawthorne worked in 1860 and 1861...."