Nathaniel Hawthorne

Nathaniel Hawthorne (July 4, 1804 – May 19, 1864) was a 19th century American novelist and short story writer. He is seen as a key figure in the development of American literature.

Biography

He was born in Salem, Massachusetts, where his birthplace is now a house museum, and died in Plymouth, New Hampshire. Hawthorne's father was a sea captain and descendant of John Hathorne, one of the judges who oversaw the Salem Witch Trials. Hawthorne's father died at sea in 1808, when Hawthorne was only four years old, and Nathaniel was raised secluded from the world by his mother.

Related Topics:
Salem, Massachusetts - Birthplace - Plymouth, New Hampshire - John Hathorne - Salem Witch Trials

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Hawthorne attended Bowdoin College in Maine from 1821–1824, befriending classmates Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and future president Franklin Pierce. Until the publication of his Twice-Told Tales in 1837, Hawthorne wrote in the comparative obscurity of what he called his "owl's nest" in the family home. As he looked back on this period of his life, he wrote: "I have not lived, but only dreamed about living" . And yet it was this period of brooding and writing that had formed, as Malcolm Cowley was to describe it, "the central fact in Hawthorne's career," his "term of apprenticeship" that would eventually result in the "richly meditated fiction."

Related Topics:
Bowdoin College - Maine - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow - Franklin Pierce - Twice-Told Tales - Malcolm Cowley

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Hawthorne was hired in 1839 as a weigher and gauger at the Boston Custom House. He had become engaged in the previous year to the illustrator and transcendentalist Sophia Peabody. Seeking a possible home for himself and Sophia, he joined the transcendentalist utopian community at Brook Farm in 1841; later that year, however, he left when he became dissatisfied with the experiment. (His Brook Farm adventure would prove an inspiration for his novel, The Blithedale Romance.) He married Sophia in 1842; they moved to The Old Manse in Concord, Massachusetts, where they lived for three years. Hawthorne and his wife then moved to The Wayside, previously a home of the Alcotts. Their neighbors in Concord included Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau.

Related Topics:
Boston - Illustrator - Transcendentalist - Sophia Peabody - Utopian - Brook Farm - The Blithedale Romance - The Old Manse - Concord, Massachusetts - The Wayside - Ralph Waldo Emerson - Henry David Thoreau

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Like Hawthorne, Sophia was a reclusive person. She was, in fact, bedridden with headaches until her sister introduced her to Hawthorne, after which her headaches seem to have abated. The Hawthornes enjoyed a long marriage, and Sophia was greatly enamored of her husband's work. In one of her journals, she writes: "I am always so dazzled and bewildered with the richness, the depth, the... jewels of beauty in his productions that I am always looking forward to a second reading where I can ponder and muse and fully take in the miraculous wealth of thoughts" .

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In 1846 Hawthorne was appointed surveyor (determining the quantity and value of imported goods) at the Salem Custom House. Like his earlier appointment to the custom house in Boston, this employment was vulnerable to the politics of the spoils system. When Hawthorne later wrote The Scarlet Letter, he included a long introductory essay depicting his time at the Salem Custom House. He lost this job due to the change of administration in Washington after the presidential election of 1848. In 1852 he wrote the campaign biography of his old friend, Franklin Pierce. With Pierce's election as president, Hawthorne was rewarded in 1853 with the position of United States consul in Liverpool. In 1857 he resigned from this post and did some traveling in France and Italy. He and his family returned to The Wayside in 1860. Failing health began to prevent him from completing new writings. Hawthorne died in his sleep on May 19, 1864 in Plymouth, N.H. while on a tour of the White Mountains with Pierce.

Related Topics:
Spoils system - The Scarlet Letter - Campaign biography - Liverpool - May 19 - 1864

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Nathaniel and Sophia Hawthorne had three children: Una, Julian, and Rose. Una suffered from mental illness and died young. Julian moved out west and wrote a book about his father. Rose converted to Roman Catholicism and took her vows as a Dominican nun. She founded a religious order to care for victims of cancer.

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