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Nathaniel Hawthorne Early Years. Born in 1804 in Salem, Massachusetts. Grandfather was a judge during The Salem Witch Trials - a series of hearings and prosecutions of people accused of witchcraft in colonial Massachusetts between February 1692 and May 1693.
- Overview
- Early years
- First works
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–64) is regarded as one of the greatest fiction writers in American literature. He was a skillful craftsman with an architectonic sense of form, as displayed in the tightly woven structure of his works, and a master of prose style, which he used to clearly reveal his characters’ psychological and moral depths.
What was Nathaniel Hawthorne’s family like?
Nathaniel Hawthorne’s family had lived in Salem, Massachusetts, since the 1600s. One ancestor was a magistrate who, in staunchly defending Puritanism, sentenced a Quaker woman to public whipping. Another was a judge in the Salem witch trials. During the 1700s the family went into decline—perhaps, Nathaniel was to think, because of his ancestors’ behaviour.
What did Nathaniel Hawthorne do for a living?
Nathaniel Hawthorne was a writer but struggled to make a living from his writing. To make ends meet, he resorted to working as a customs officer in Boston, living briefly at the utopian commune Brook Farm, and serving as U.S. consul in Liverpool, Lancashire.
Nathaniel Hawthorne (born July 4, 1804, Salem, Massachusetts, U.S.—died May 19, 1864, Plymouth, New Hampshire) American novelist and short-story writer who was a master of the allegorical and symbolic tale. One of the greatest fiction writers in American literature, he is best known for The Scarlet Letter (1850) and The House of the Seven Gables (1851).
Hawthorne’s ancestors had lived in Salem since the 17th century. His earliest American ancestor, William Hathorne (Nathaniel added the w to the name when he began to write), was a magistrate who had sentenced a Quaker woman to public whipping. He had acted as a staunch defender of Puritan orthodoxy, with its zealous advocacy of a “pure,” unaffected...
In college Hawthorne had excelled only in composition and had determined to become a writer. Upon graduation, he had written an amateurish novel, Fanshawe, which he published at his own expense—only to decide that it was unworthy of him and to try to destroy all copies. Hawthorne, however, soon found his own voice, style, and subjects, and within five years of his graduation he had published such impressive and distinctive stories as “The Hollow of the Three Hills” and “An Old Woman’s Tale.” By 1832, “My Kinsman, Major Molineux” and “Roger Malvin’s Burial,” two of his greatest tales—and among the finest in the language—had appeared. “Young Goodman Brown,” perhaps the greatest tale of witchcraft ever written, appeared in 1835.
His increasing success in placing his stories brought him a little fame. Unwilling to depend any longer on his uncles’ generosity, he turned to a job in the Boston Custom House (1839–40) and for six months in 1841 was a resident at the agricultural cooperative Brook Farm, in West Roxbury, Massachusetts. Even when his first signed book, Twice-Told Tales, was published in 1837, the work had brought gratifying recognition but no dependable income. By 1842, however, Hawthorne’s writing had brought him a sufficient income to allow him to marry Sophia Peabody; the couple rented the Old Manse in Concord and began a happy three-year period that Hawthorne would later record in his essay “The Old Manse.”
Britannica Quiz
Writers’ Retreats
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
The first part focuses on Hawthorne’s interest in and knowledge of past (Puritan and colonial) and contemporary nineteenth-century history (women’s, African American, Native American) as the inspiration for his writings and the source of his literary success.
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864) The Birth-Mark (1846) In the latter part of the last century there lived a man of science, an eminent proficient in every branch of natural philosophy, who not long before our story opens had made experience of a spiritual affinity more attractive than any chemical one. He had left his laboratory to the care of
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The most thorough modern biography is James R. Mellow's Nathaniel Hawthorne in His Times (1980). As his title suggests, Mellow pays attention to the historical and social context of Hawthorne's experience, and he provides detailed accounts of events in Hawthorne's life.
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864) Since the publication of The Scarlet Letter in 1850, Nathaniel Hawthorne has been recognized as one of America’s most important writers, both a “romancer” who probed inner mysteries and a “realist” who assessed the American character and experience.
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Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864) “Young Goodman Brown” (1835) Young Goodman Brown came forth at sunset, into the street of Salem village, but put his head back, after crossing the threshold, to exchange a parting kiss with his young wife. And Faith, as the wife was aptly named, thrust her own pretty head into the street, letting the wind
