Nathaniel Hawthorne

Nathaniel Hawthorne (born Nathaniel Hathorne; July 4, 1804 – May 19, 1864) was an American novelist and short story writer.

His works often focus on history, morality, and religion.

He was born in 1804 in Salem, Massachusetts, from a family long associated with that town.

Nathaniel Hathorne, as his name was originally spelled, was born on July 4, 1804, in Salem, Massachusetts; his birthplace is preserved and open to the public.

His great-great-great-grandfather, William Hathorne, was a Puritan and the first of the family to emigrate from England.

He settled in Dorchester, Massachusetts, before moving to Salem.

There he became an important member of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and held many political positions, including magistrate and judge, becoming infamous for his harsh sentencing.

William's son, Hawthorne's great-great-grandfather, John Hathorne was one of the judges who oversaw the Salem witch trials.

Hawthorne probably added the "w" to his surname in his early twenties, shortly after graduating from college, in an effort to dissociate himself from his notorious forebears.

Hawthorne's father Nathaniel Hathorne Sr. was a sea captain who died in 1808 of yellow fever in Dutch Suriname; he had been a member of the East India Marine Society.

After his death, his widow moved with young Nathaniel, his older sister Elizabeth, and their younger sister Louisa to live with relatives named the Mannings in Salem, where they lived for 10 years.

Young Hawthorne was hit on the leg while playing "bat and ball" on November 10, 1813, and he became lame and bedridden for a year, though several physicians could find nothing wrong with him.

In the summer of 1816, the family lived as boarders with farmers before moving to a home recently built specifically for them by Hawthorne's uncles Richard and Robert Manning in Raymond, Maine, near Sebago Lake.

Years later, Hawthorne looked back at his time in Maine fondly: "Those were delightful days, for that part of the country was wild then, with only scattered clearings, and nine tenths of it primeval woods."

In 1819, he was sent back to Salem for school and soon complained of homesickness and being too far from his mother and sisters.

He distributed seven issues of The Spectator to his family in August and September 1820 for fun.

The homemade newspaper was written by hand and included essays, poems, and news featuring the young author's adolescent humor.

Hawthorne's uncle Robert Manning insisted that the boy attend college, despite Hawthorne's protests.

Hawthorne entered Bowdoin College in 1821, was elected to Phi Beta Kappa in 1824, and graduated in 1825.

With the financial support of his uncle, Hawthorne was sent to Bowdoin College in 1821, partly because of family connections in the area, and also because of its relatively inexpensive tuition rate.

Hawthorne met future president Franklin Pierce on the way to Bowdoin, at the stage stop in Portland, and the two became fast friends.

Once at the school, he also met future poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, future congressman Jonathan Cilley, and future naval reformer Horatio Bridge.

He graduated with the class of 1825, and later described his college experience to Richard Henry Stoddard: "I was educated (as the phrase is) at Bowdoin College. I was an idle student, negligent of college rules and the Procrustean details of academic life, rather choosing to nurse my own fancies than to dig into Greek roots and be numbered among the learned Thebans."

He published his first work in 1828, the novel Fanshawe; he later tried to suppress it, feeling that it was not equal to the standard of his later work.

Hawthorne's first published work, Fanshawe: A Tale, based on his experiences at Bowdoin College, appeared anonymously in October 1828, printed at the author's own expense of $100.

Although it received generally positive reviews, it did not sell well.

He published several minor pieces in the Salem Gazette.

In 1836, Hawthorne served as the editor of the American Magazine of Useful and Entertaining Knowledge.

At the time, he boarded with poet Thomas Green Fessenden on Hancock Street in Beacon Hill in Boston.

He published several short stories in periodicals, which he collected in 1837 as Twice-Told Tales.

The following year, he became engaged to Sophia Peabody.

He worked at the Boston Custom House and joined Brook Farm, a transcendentalist community, before marrying Peabody in 1842.

The couple moved to The Old Manse in Concord, Massachusetts, later moving to Salem, the Berkshires, then to The Wayside in Concord.

The Scarlet Letter was published in 1850, followed by a succession of other novels.

His published works include novels, short stories, and a biography of his college friend Franklin Pierce, written for his 1852 campaign for President of the United States, which Pierce won, becoming the 14th president.

A political appointment as consul took Hawthorne and family to Europe before their return to Concord in 1860.

Hawthorne died on May 19, 1864.

Much of Hawthorne's writing centers on New England, many works featuring moral metaphors with an anti-Puritan inspiration.

His fiction works are considered part of the Romantic movement and, more specifically, dark romanticism.

His themes often center on the inherent evil and sin of humanity, and his works often have moral messages and deep psychological complexity.