Nathaniel Hawthorne's romance concerns a group of American expatriates in mid-nineteenth century Italy, and their tragic encounter with the faun-like Italian count, Donatello. It is both a murder story and a parable of the Fall of Man, dominated by the fragility and durability of human life and art.

Susan Manning has previously edited Scott's Quentin Durward, Washington Irving's Sketchbook and Crevecoeur's Letters from an American Farmer for OWC. Her books include The Puritan-Provincial Vision (CUP, 1990) and Fragments of Union (Palgrave, 2001).