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.

Writings

Hawthorne is best-known today for his many short stories (he called them "tales") and his four major romances of 1850–60: The Scarlet Letter (1850), The House of the Seven Gables (1851), The Blithedale Romance (1852), and The Marble Faun (1860). (Another book-length romance, Fanshawe, was published anonymously in 1828.)

Related Topics:
Short stories - Romances - The Scarlet Letter - The House of the Seven Gables - The Blithedale Romance - The Marble Faun - Fanshawe

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Before publishing his first collection of tales in 1837, Hawthorne wrote scores of short stories and sketches, publishing them anonymously or pseudonymously in periodicals such as The New-England Magazine and The United States Democratic Review. Only after collecting a number of his short stories into the two-volume Twice-Told Tales in 1837 did Hawthorne begin to attach his name to his works.

Related Topics:
Short stories - Pseudonymously - Twice-Told Tales

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Much of Hawthorne's work is set in colonial New England, and many of his short stories have been read as moral allegories influenced by his Puritan background. "Ethan Brand" (1850) tells the story of a lime-burner who sets off to find the Unpardonable Sin, and in doing so, commits it. One of Hawthorne's most famous tales, "The Birth-Mark" (1843), concerns a young doctor who removes a birthmark from his wife's face, an operation which kills her. Other well-known tales include "Rappaccini's Daughter" (1844), "My Kinsman, Major Molineux" (1832), "The Minister's Black Veil" (1836), and "Young Goodman Brown" (1835). "The Maypole of Merrymount" recounts a most interesting encounter between the Puritans and the forces of anarchy and hedonism.

Related Topics:
New England - Allegories - Puritan - The Birth-Mark - Rappaccini's Daughter - My Kinsman, Major Molineux - The Minister's Black Veil - Young Goodman Brown - Merrymount

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Recent criticism has focused on Hawthorne's narrative voice, treating it as a self-conscious rhetorical construction, not to be conflated with Hawthorne's own voice. Such an approach complicates the long-dominant tradition of regarding Hawthorne as a gloomy, guilt-ridden moralist.

Related Topics:
Rhetorical - Moralist

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Hawthorne enjoyed a brief friendship with American novelist Herman Melville beginning on August 5 1850, when the two authors met at a picnic hosted by a mutual friend. Melville had just read Hawthorne's short story collection Mosses from an Old Manse, which Melville later praised in a famous review, "Hawthorne and His Mosses." Melville's letters to Hawthorne provide insight into the composition of Moby-Dick. Hawthorne's letters to Melville did not survive.

Related Topics:
American - Novelist - Herman Melville - August 5 - 1850 - Mosses from an Old Manse - Moby-Dick

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Edgar Allan Poe wrote important, though largely unflattering reviews of both Twice-Told Tales and Mosses from an Old Manse.

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