Nathaniel Hawthorne Biography and List of Works

Novelist and short story writer, a central figure in the American Renaissance. Hawthorne's best-known works include THE SCARLET LETTER (1850) and THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES (1951). Writers like Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Herman Melville, and Hawthorne looked not only to the Puritan origins of American history, but also to Puritan styles of rhetoric to create a distinctive American literary voice.

"Not to be deficient in this particular, the author has provided himself with a moral - the truth, namely, that the wrongdoing of one generation lives into the successive ones."
(from The House of the Seven Gables, 1951)

Nathaniel Hawthorne was born in Salem, Massachusetts. His father was a sea captain and descendent of John Hawthorne, one of the judges in the Salem witchcraft trials of 1692. He died when the young Nathaniel was four year old. Hawthorne grew up in seclusion with his widowed mother. He was educated at the Bowdoin College in Maine (1821-24). In the school among his friends were Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Franklin Pierce, who became the 14th president of the U.S.

Between the years 1825 and 1836 Hawthorne worked as a writer and contributor to periodicals. In 1828 Hawthorne published his first novel, FANSHAWE, anonymously at his own expense. The work was based on his college life. It did not receive much attention and the author burned the unsold copies. However, the book initiated a friendship between Hawthorhe and the published Samuel Goodrich. He edited in 1836 the American Magazine of Useful and Entertaining Knowledge in Boston, and compiled in 1837 PETER PARLEY'S UNIVERSAL HISTORY for children. In was followed by a series of books for children - GRANDFATHER'S CHAIR (1841), FAMOUS OLD PEOPLE (1841), LIBERTY TREE (1841), and BIOGRAPHICAL STORIES FOR CHILDREN (1842).

"Selfishness is one of the qualities apt to inspire love."

In 1842 Hawthorne became friends with the Transcendentals in Concord - Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Bronson Alcott, but generally he did not have much confidence in intellectuals and artist. He married in 1842 Sophia Peabody, an active participant in the Transcendentalist movement, and settled with her in Concord. A growing family and mounting debts compelled the family's return to Salem. Hawthorne was unable to earn a living as a writer and in 1846 he was appointed surveyor of the Port of Salem, where he worked for three years.

Hawthorne was one of the first American writers to explore the hidden motivations of his characters. "The Custom-House" sketch, prefatory to The Scarlet Letter, was based partly on his experiences in Salem. The novel appeared in 1850 and told a story of the earliest victims of Puritan obsession and spiritual ferocity. The central theme is the effect of guilt, anxiety and sorrow. The House of the Seven Gables was published next year. It focused on a family legacy, which operates as an inherited curse by one of the victims of the 17th-century Salem witchcraft trials. THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE (1852) was set in a utopian New England community. Hawthorne had earlier invested and lived in the Brook Farm Commune, West Roxbury. This led to speculations about that the doomed heroine was a portrait of the transcendentalist Margaret Fuller. During this productive period Hawthorne also established a warm friendship with Herman Melville, who dedicated Moby-Dick to him.

In 1853 Franklin Pierce became President and Hawthorne, who had written a campaign biography for him, was appointed the consulship in Liverpool, England. He lived in England for four years and spent a year and half in Italy writing THE MARBLE FAUN (1860), a story about the conflicts between innocence and guilt. It was his last completed novel. In his Concord home, The Wayside, he wrote the essays contained in OUR OLD HOME (1863). Hawthorne died on May 19, 1864, in Plymouth, N.H. on a trip to the mountains with his friend Franklin Pierce. After his death his wife edited and published his notebooks. Modern editions of these works include many of the sections, which she cut out or altered.

The Scatlett Letter: The main action of Hawthorne's story, the illicit love affair of Hester Prynne with the Reverend Arhur Dimmesdale and the birth of their child Pearl, takes place before the book opens. - In Puritan New England, Hester, the mother of an illegitimate child, wears the scarlet A (for adulteress) for years rather than reveal that her lover was the saintly young village minister. Her husband, Roger Chillingworth, proceeds to torment the guilt stricken man, who confesses his adultery before dying in Hester's arms. Hester plans to take her daughter Pearl to Europe to begin a new life. - Hester Prynne has been seen as a pioneer feminist in the line from Anne Hutchinson to Margaret Fuller, a classic nurturer, a sexually autonomous woman, and an Amrrican equivalent of Anna Karenina. The influence of the novel is apparent in Henry James's The Portrait of a Lady (1881), in Kate Chopin's The Awakening (1899), and in William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying (1930).

The House of the Seven Gables: Based on the legend of a curse, which pronounced on Hawthorne's own family by a woman who was condemned to death during the Salem witchcraft trials. The curse is mirrored in the decay of the Pyncheon family's seven-gabled mansion. Finally the descendants of the killed woman marries a young niece of the family, and the hereditary sin ends.

For further reading: Hawthorne's Fiction by Richard Harter Fogle (1964); The Shape of Hawthorne's Career by Nina Baym (1976); New Essays on "The Scarlet Letter," ed. by Michael J. Colacurcio (1985); Nathaniel Hawthorne, ed. by Harold Bloom (1986); Nathaniel Hawthorne by Charles Swann (1991); Hawthorne's Narrative Strategies by Michael Dunne (1995) - See also: Herman Melville, Stephen King - Note: Julian Hawthorne (1846-1934), the son of Nathaniel Hawthorne, who began publishing short fiction in 1870. Many of JH's novellas and short stories are weird tales of curses and apparitions, some drawing inspiration from his Swedenborgian faith. His career was interrupted by a jail term. He moved to California, where he wrote for newspapers, pulp magazine All-Story Weekly, and edited series of anthologies. His daughter Hildegarde (1871-1952) also wrote some fantasy, which can be found in Faded Garden (1985, ed. Jessica Amanda Salmonson).

FANSHAWE, (1828)