Nathaniel Hawthorne 
The Ancestral Footstep (Barnes & Noble Digital Library) 

Hawthorne struggled in vain to complete this fragment of a romance for more than twenty years. Based on an old English legend of a bloody footprint, it illuminates many of the themes Hawthorne touched on in his greatest works, as well as his methods of composition. It was published posthumously in 1883.

About the author

Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864) was an American novelist and short-story writer whose works were notable for their strong moral focus, hatred of hypocrisy, and a use of symbolism so lush and romantic as to almost constitute in itself a counter-argument to any morality but art for art’s sake. His best known work is The Scarlet Letter (1850).