Nathaniel Hawthorne was a man of business, politics, nature, morals, dedication and imagination who was greatly haunted by the actions of his Puritan ancestors (Gollin 360). Being one of the pioneers of noteworthy American literature, Hawthorne used the issues of his time and the history of Puritan New England as his settings. He was the son of Nathaniel Hathorne and Elizabeth Manning and was born on July 4, 1804 in Salem, Massachusetts. After his father’s death, Hawthorne and his family moved to their mother’s house. Later, he went to Bowdoin College and graduated in 1825. Here, he became friends with future U.S. president Franklin Pierce. He lacked interest in medicine, ministry and law, so he chose to write (Gollin 358). Perchance in shame of sharing a tie with men like John and William Hathorne, he then added a w to his last name.
His early works were short stories put into periodicals and eventually into the Twice Told Tales which earned him fame. Then, he spent a year at both the Boston Custom House and the utopian Brook Farm. Both of these experiences stifled his imagination, and so he left. After marrying Sophia Peabody and having children, Hawthorne became destitute. So, he earned through Democratic Party ties a stable job at the Salem Custom House but lost it when the Whigs took over. So, he began to write again and produced his greatest acclaimed works. Eventually, President Pierce appointed him as the U.S. consul in Liverpool. From Liverpool, he moved to Italy, where he wrote a novel, back to England and finally back to Concord, Massachusetts. There, he died on May 19, 1864. Hawthorne covered the literary gamut with children’s books and short stories to powerful novels. Ultimately, Hawthorne represents how the issues ...
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... resided in their first permanent home, The Wayside, at Concord. Hawthorne’s health eventually began to fail him, but since he refused to submit to medical examination, the details of his health issues remain unclear. He eventually died in Plymouth, New Hampshire on May 19, 1864 (Magill 1; Campbell 1; “Nathaniel Hawthorne”; Eldred 1).
Nathaniel Hawthorne was born in the year 1804 in the heart of Salem, Massachusetts, where to Salem witch trials were conducted. Hawthorne was born in an unforgiving time period, where life revolved around religion and family. Hawthorne’s father died of Yellow Fever in the year 1808. Nathaniel grew up fatherless, which had a lasting effect on who he later became to be. Education at the time was centered on reading and writing, with a heavy religious influence. “The education of the next generation was important to further "purify" the church and perfect social living” (Kizer). However, since his father passed away, there was no other man to instill the Puritan beliefs into young Nathaniel. Hawthorne later on was able to see the culture through a different lens than the people surrounding him, which made him slightly opposed to the Puritan way of life. He became intellectually rebellious; not thinking in the same way that his peers or family was.
Hawthorne, Nathaniel. “The Scarlet Letter”. American Literature: Volume One. Ed. William E. Cain. New York: Pearson, 2004. 809-813. Print
Hawthorne turned to writing after his graduation from Bowdoin College. His first novel, Fanshawe, was unsuccessful and Hawthorne himself disavowed it as amateurish. However, he wrote several successful short stories, including "My Kinsman, Major Molyneaux," "Roger Malvin's Burial" and "Young Goodman Brown." However, insufficient earnings as a writer forced Hawthorne to enter a career as a Boston Custom House measurer in 1839. After three years Hawthorne was dismissed from his job with the Salem Custom House. By 1842 his writing amassed Hawthorne a sufficient income for him to marry Sophia Peabody and move to The Manse in Concord, which was at that time the center of the Transcendental movement. Hawthorne returned to Salem in 1845, where he was appointed surveyor of the Boston Custom House by President James Polk, but was dismissed from this post when Zachary Taylor became president. Hawthorne then devoted himself to his most famous novel, The Scarlet Letter. He zealously worked on the novel with a determination he had not known before. His intense suffering infused the novel with imaginative energy, leading him to describe it as the "hell-fired story." On February 3, 1850, Hawthorne read the final pages to his wife. He wrote, "It broke her heart and sent her to bed with a grievous headache, which I look upon as a triumphant success.
Wagenknecht, Edward. Nathaniel Hawthorne – The Man, His Tales and Romances. New York: Continuum Publishing Co., 1989.
"Nathaniel Hawthorne- Biography." The European Graduate School. The European Graduate School EGS, 1997-2012. Web. 25 November 2013.
BIOGRAM The man Nathaniel Hawthorne, an author of the nineteenth century, was born in 1804, in Salem, Massachusetts. It was there that he lived a poverty-stricken childhood without the financial support of a father, because he had passed away in 1808. Hawthorne was raised strictly Puritan, his great-grandfather had even been one of the judges in the Puritan witchcraft trials during the 1600s. This and Hawthorne’s destitute upbringing advanced his understanding of human nature and distress felt by social, religious, and economic inequities.
On July 4, 1804, an author by the name of Nathaniel Hawthorne was born (Meltzer). As Hawthorne grew, he began to develop a view of himself as “the obscurest man in American letters.” Through the use of popular themes such as isolation, guilt, and earthly imperfection, Hawthorne was able to involve much of his life and ancestral past in his work to answer his own political and religious wonders (“Nathaniel”). Hawthorne successfully “confronts reality rather than evading it” in many of his stories (Clendenning).
Wagenknecht, Edward. Nathaniel Hawthorne – The Man, His Tales and Romances. New York: Continuum Publishing Co., 1989.
Hawthorne, Nathaniel. "The Scarlet Letter." Nathaniel Hawthorne's Tales. Ed. James McIntosh. New York: Norton, 1987.