 "The Ambitious Guest" was published as the first of a series of travel pieces he titled "Sketches from Memory, By a Pedestrian", in the November 1835 issue of the "New-England Magazine".The second in the series, "The Great Carbuncle", was published a month later before the series was discontinued.Hawthorne biographer Brenda Wineapple suggests that "The Ambitious Guest" expresses Hawthorne's own desire for fame and uncertainty of the future at the early stage in his career when it was written.