Excerpt from Sketches of Leafy Warwickshire, Rural and Urban N writing these Sketches of Leafy Warwickshire, I have striven, as far as possible, to treat of subjects but little known to the general reader and outside the scope of the ordinary guide-book. I had also in View the comparative dearth of Warwickshire books imparting information in a light, interesting, and chatty form. I therefore venture to hope that in the pages of this book will be found enough agreeable matter to inspire a still Wider and more permanent interest than already exists in this classic and historic shire - made for ever famous by the genius. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

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In 1853, when he was forty-nine and at the height of his literary career, Nathaniel Hawthorne accepted the post of U.S. consul at Liverpool, England, as a reward for writing the campaign biography of his college friend President Franklin Pierce. Hawthorne's departure for Europe marked a turning point in his life. While Our Old Home, shrewd essays on his observations in England, The Marble Faun, a romance set in Italy, and the English Notebooks and French and Italian Notebooks were all results of his European residence, he returned to Concord in 1860 frustrated, depressed, and sick. He died in 1864.