at intervals, but am liable to cold fits, during which I think it the most infernal nonsense." Sophia wrote to her sister Elizabeth Peabody that her husband's reaction was typical: "As usual, he thinks the book good for nothing... He has regularly despised each one of his books immediately upon finishing it." Hawthorne struggled with a title for his new book. He considered several, including Monte Beni; or, The Faun: A Romance, The Romance of a Faun, Marble and Life; a Romance, Marble and Man; a Romance, and St. Hilda's Shrine. The book was published simultaneously in America and England in late 1860; the title for the British edition was Transformation: Or the Romance of Monte Beni. The alternate title was chosen by the publishers and was used against Hawthorne's wishes. Both titles continue to be used today in the U.K. Encouraged to write a book long enough to fill three volumes, Hawthorne included extended descriptions that critics found distracting or boring. Complaints about the ambiguous ending led Hawthorne to add a postscript to the second edition. Critical response Ralph Waldo Emerson called the novel "mush" but James Russell Lowell was pleased with it and praised it as a Christian parable. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow privately wrote that it was a "wonderful book" but that it had "the old, dull pain in it that runs through all of Hawthorne's writings". Reviews were generally favorable, though many were confused by the ending. William Dean Howells later wrote: "Everybody was reading it, and more or less bewailing its indefinite close, but yielding him that full honor and praise which a writer can hope for but once in his life." Friend and critic Edwin Percy Whipple noted that, even if Hawthorne had written nothing else, The Marble Faun would qualify him as a master of English composition. John Lothrop Motley wrote a long private letter to Hawthorne full of effusive praise: Influence The Marble Faun has been cited as an influence on H. P. Lovecraft's The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath. A Marble Faun is also the title of a book of poetry published in 1924 by William Faulkner. Adaptations In 1977 the novel was adapted into a three-part Italian miniseries, produced by RAI and directed by Silverio Blasi. The novel was adapted into an opera with music by Ellen Bender and a libretto by Jessica Treadway, completed in 1996. Notes External links The Italian