Nathaniel Hawthorne (né 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 the town. Hawthorne entered Bowdoin College in 1821, was elected to Phi Beta Kappa in 1824,Who Belongs To Phi Beta Kappa , Phi Beta Kappa website, accessed October 4, 2009 and graduated in 1825. 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.
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. 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, and many works feature 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. 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.
Life and career
Early life
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.Haas, Irvin. Historic Homes of American Authors. Washington, DC: The Preservation Press, 1991: 118. . 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.Miller, 20–21 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 disassociate himself from his notorious forebears.McFarland, 18 Hawthorne's father Nathaniel Hathorne Sr. was a sea captain who died in 1808 of yellow fever in Dutch Suriname;Wineapple, 20–21 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,McFarland, 17 where they lived for 10 years. Young Hawthorne was hit on the leg while playing "bat and ball" on November 10, 1813,Miller, 47 and he became lame and bedridden for a year, though several physicians could find nothing wrong with him.Mellow, 18
In the summer of 1816, the family lived as boarders with farmersMellow, 20 before moving to a home recently built specifically for them by Hawthorne's uncles Richard and Robert Manning in Raymond, Maine, near Sebago Lake.Miller, 50 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."Mellow, 21 In 1819, he was sent back to Salem for school and soon complained of homesickness and being too far from his mother and sisters.Mellow, 22 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.Miller, 57
Hawthorne's uncle, Robert Manning, insisted that the boy attend college, despite Hawthorne's protests.Edwards, Herbert. "Nathaniel Hawthorne in Maine ", Downeast Magazine, 1962 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.Wineapple, 44–45 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.Cheever, 99 He graduated with the class of 1825, and later described his college experience to Richard Henry Stoddard:
Early career
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.Wineapple, 87–88 He was offered an appointment as weigher and gauger at the Boston Custom House at a salary of $1,500 a year, which he accepted on January 17, 1839.Miller, 169 During his time there, he rented a room from George Stillman Hillard, business partner of Charles Sumner.Mellow, 169 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."Letter to Longfellow, June 4, 1837. He contributed short stories to various magazines and annuals, including "Young Goodman Brown" and "The Minister's Black Veil", though none drew major attention to him. Horatio Bridge offered to cover the risk of collecting these stories in the spring of 1837 into the volume Twice-Told Tales, which made Hawthorne known locally.McFarland, 22–23
Marriage and family
While at Bowdoin, Hawthorne wagered a bottle of Madeira wine with his friend Jonathan Cilley that Cilley would get married before Hawthorne did.Manning Hawthorne, "Nathaniel Hawthorne at Bowdoin", The New England Quarterly, Vol. 13, No. 2 (June 1940): 246–279. By 1836, he had won the bet, but he did not remain a bachelor for life. He had public flirtations with Mary Silsbee and Elizabeth Peabody,Cheever, 102 then he began pursuing Peabody's sister, the illustrator and transcendentalist Sophia Peabody. He joined the transcendentalist Utopian community at Brook Farm in 1841, not because he agreed with the experiment but because it helped him save money to marry Sophia.McFarland, 83 He paid a $1,000 deposit and was put in charge of shoveling the hill of manure referred to as "the Gold Mine".Cheever, 104 He left later that year, though his Brook Farm adventure became an inspiration for his novel The Blithedale Romance.McFarland, 149 Hawthorne married Sophia Peabody on July 9, 1842, at a ceremony in the Peabody parlor on West Street in Boston.Wineapple, 160 The couple moved to The Old Manse in Concord, Massachusetts,McFarland, 25 where they lived for three years. His neighbor Ralph Waldo Emerson invited him into his social circle, but Hawthorne was almost pathologically shy and stayed silent at gatherings.Schreiner, 123 At the Old Manse, Hawthorne wrote most of the tales collected in Mosses from an Old Manse.Miller, 246–247
Like Hawthorne, Sophia was a reclusive person. Throughout her early life, she had frequent migraines and underwent several experimental medical treatments.Mellow, 6–7 She was mostly bedridden until her sister introduced her to Hawthorne, after which her headaches seem to have abated. The Hawthornes enjoyed a long and happy marriage. He referred to her as his "Dove" and wrote that she "is, in the strictest sense, my sole companion; and I need no other—there is no vacancy in my mind, any more than in my heart ... Thank God that I suffice for her boundless heart!"McFarland, 87 Sophia greatly admired her husband's work. She wrote in one of her journals: 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.January 14, 1851, Journal of Sophia Hawthorne. Berg Collection NY Public Library.
Poet Ellery Channing came to the Old Manse for help on the first anniversary of the Hawthornes' marriage. A local teenager named Martha Hunt had drowned herself in the river and Hawthorne's boat Pond Lily was needed to find her body. Hawthorne helped recover the corpse, which he described as "a spectacle of such perfect horror ... She was the very image of death-agony".Schreiner, 116–117 The incident later inspired a scene in his novel The Blithedale Romance.
The Hawthornes had three children. Their first was daughter Una, born March 3, 1844; her name was a reference to The Faerie Queene, to the displeasure of family members.McFarland, 97 Hawthorne wrote to a friend, "I find it a very sober and serious kind of happiness that springs from the birth of a child ... There is no escaping it any longer. I have business on earth now, and must look about me for the means of doing it."Schreiner, 119 In October 1845, the Hawthornes moved to Salem.Reynolds, 10 In 1846, their son Julian was born. Hawthorne wrote to his sister Louisa on June 22, 1846: "A small troglodyte made his appearance here at ten minutes to six o'clock this morning, who claimed to be your nephew."Mellow, 273 Daughter Rose was born in May 1851, and Hawthorne called her his "autumnal flower".Miller, 343–344
Middle years
In April 1846, Hawthorne was officially appointed the Surveyor for the District of Salem and Beverly and Inspector of the Revenue for the Port of Salem at an annual salary of $1,200.Miller, 242 He had difficulty writing during this period, as he admitted to Longfellow:
I am trying to resume my pen ... Whenever I sit alone, or walk alone, I find myself dreaming about stories, as of old; but these forenoons in the Custom House undo all that the afternoons and evenings have done. I should be happier if I could write.Miller, 265
This employment, like his earlier appointment to the custom house in Boston, was vulnerable to the politics of the spoils system. Hawthorne was a Democrat and lost this job due to the change of administration in Washington after the presidential election of 1848. He wrote a letter of protest to the Boston Daily Advertiser, which was attacked by the Whigs and supported by the Democrats, making Hawthorne's dismissal a much-talked about event in New England.Cheever, 179 He was deeply affected by the death of his mother in late July, calling it "the darkest hour I ever lived".Cheever, 180 He was appointed the corresponding secretary of the Salem Lyceum in 1848. Guests who came to speak that season included Emerson, Thoreau, Louis Agassiz, and Theodore Parker.Miller, 264–265