The Dolliver Romance was the work that Nathaniel Hawthorne was working on at the time of his death. Hawthorne began working on it in 1858 after returning to the US from England, but put it aside for his Marble Faun. He began working on it again in 1861, as the Civil War started, and was still working on it in 1864 when he died suddenly. This work collects three works that were unfinished: The Dolliver Romance, Septimus Felton, or, the Elixir of Life, and The Ancestral Footstep.