Choose another

writer in this
calendar:
by name:
A B C D E F G H
I J K L M N O P
Q R S T U V W X
Y Z
by birthday from
the calendar.
Credits and
feedback
TimeSearch
for Books and
Writers
by Bamber
Gascoigne
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)

Novelist and short story writer, a central figure in the
American Renaissance. Nathaniel Hawthorne's best-
known works include The Scarlet Letter (1850) and
The House of the Seven Gables (1851). Like Edgar
Allan Poe, Hawthorne took a dark view of human
nature.
"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)
Nathaniel Hawthorne was born in Salem,
Massachusetts. His father, Nathaniel Hathorne, was
a sea captain and descendent of Colonel John
Hathorne, one of the judges in the Salem witchcraft
trials of 1692. According to a story, he also brought
down a curse on the subsequent Hathornes by one
of the accused witches. John's father William hunted
Quakers "like a blood-hound" and once he had a
woman dragged half naked through the town while
being lashed with a whip.
When the young Nathaniel was four year old, his
father died of yellow fever in Surinam. Elizabeth
Clarke Manning Hathorne, his mother, withdrew to a
life of seclusion, which she maintained till her death.
From Salem the family moved to Raymond, Maine,
where Hawthorne enjoyed the surrounding natural
resources and freedom far away from churches and
schools. He also became a good shot and an
excellent fisherman. "How often do I long for my gun,
and wish that I could againg savagize with you," he
lamented to his sister Louisa when he had to return
to Salem. "But I shall never again run wild in
Raymond, and I shall never be so happy as when I
did."
From his childhood Hawthorne was a voracous
reader. He consumed stories, novels, and poetry
Walter Scott, Ann Radcliffe, Samuel Johnson, Byron,
Burns, and Henry Fielding, just to mention a few. In
1821 he entered the Bowdoin College, where his
friends includeded Longfellow and Franklin Pierce,
who became the 14th president of the U.S. During
his senior years, he attended lectures at the Maine
Medical School. Between the years 1825 and 1836,
Hawthorne worked as a writer and contributor to
periodicals. John L. O'Sullivan's magazine the
Democratic Review published two dozen stories by
him. After publishers rejected his first short-story
collection, Seven Tales of My Native Land ,
Hawthorne burned the manuscript. Hawthorne's first
novel, Fanshawe (1828), appeared anonymously at
his own expense. The work was based on his
college life. It did not receive much attention and
the author destroyed the unsold copies. However,
the book initiated a friendship between Hawthorne
and the publisher Samuel Goodrich.
Hawthorne 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). In 1841 he resigned his
post at the Boston Custom House and briefly
considered starting a magazine with Longfellow.
However, Longfellow was not enthusiastic about the
idea.
Hawthorne's second, expanded edition of Twice-
Told Tales (1837), was praised by Edgar Allan Poe in
Graham's Magazine. "We know of few compositions
which the critic can more honestly commend that
these Twice-Told Tales," Poe stated. "As Americans,
we feel proud of the book." Among Hawthorne's
most widely anthologized stories are 'Young
Goodman Brown' (1835), originally published in the
New-England Magazine, 'The Birthmark (1843),
published in Pioneer, and 'Rappacini's Daughter'
(1844), which first appeared in Democratic Review,
and was collected in Mosses from an Old Manse
(1846). 'Young Goodman Brown,' included in this
collection, is an allegorical tale, in which Hawthorne
touches many of his favorite themes, such as
hypocrisy, witchcraft, the Puritan guilt, and the sins
of fathers. The protagonist, a young man, is from
Salem. Against the wishes of his wife, named Faith,
he sets off on a journey through the dark woods, and
returns home a changed man, disillusioned after
nightmarish experiences.
Hawthorne became friends with the
Transcendentalists in Concord, Ralph Waldo
Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, who also drew
on the Puritan legacy. Generally he did not have
much confidence in intellectuals and artists, and
eventually he had to admit that "the treasure of
intellectual gold" did not provide food for his family.
In 1842 Hawthorne married Sophia Peabody, an
active participant in the Transcendentalist
movement. Only the bride's family attended the
wedding.
When Hawthorne and his wife Sophia moved to The
Old Manse in Concord, Thoreau planted a vegetable
garden beans, Indian corn, and summer squash
for them. Eventually there was superabundance of
cabbages. A growing family and mounting debts
compelled their return to Salem. Unable to earn a
living as a writer, he took a job as a surveyor of the
Port of Salem. Once he wrote to Henry Wadsworth
Longfellow: "I have locked myself in a dungeon and I
can't find the key to get out." He worked there for
three years until he was fired. "I detest this town so
much," Hawthorne said, "that I hate to go out into
the streets, or to have people see me."
The Scarlet Letter was a critical and popular
success. 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,
named in the book by this initial) for years rather
than reveal that her lover was the saintly young
village minister. Her husband, Roger Chillingworth,
proceeds to torment the guiltstricken man, who
confesses his adultery before dying in Hester's arms.
Hester plans to take her daughter Pearl to
Europe and begin a new life. Toward the end of the
dark romance Hawthorne wrote: "Be true! Be true!
Show freely to the world, if not your worst, yet some
trait whereby the worst may be inferred!" Hester
Prynne has been seen as a pioneer feminist in the
line from Anne Hutchinson to Margaret Fuller, but
also as a classic nurturer, a sexually autonomous
woman, and an American equivalent of Anna
Karenina. The influence of the novel is apparent in
Henry James's The Portrait of a Lady (1881), Kate
Chopin's The Awakening (1899), and William
Faulkner's As I Lay Dying (1930). Hawthorne's
daughter Una, christened after Spenser's heroine in
The Faerie Queene, served as the model for Pearl.
Unhappy since her childhood, she died at the age of
thirty-three. "It was impossible she would ever be
happy," said her friend.
Hawthorne was one of the first American writers to
explore the hidden motivations of his characters.
Among his allegorical stories is 'The Artist of the
Beautiful' (1844) in which his protagonist creates an
insect, perhaps a steam-driven butterfly. A girl he
admires asks whether he made it, and he answers:
"Wherefore ask who created it, so it be beautiful?"
Eventually the insect is killed by an unfeeling child.
Of his own workroom Hawthorne said: "This
deserves to be called a haunted chamber, for
thousands and thousands of visions have appeared
to me in it."
"The Custom-House" sketch, prefatory to The
Scarlet Letter, was based partly on Hawthorhe's
experiences in Salem. His picture of the sin-
obsessed Puritans has subsequently been criticized
they were less extreme than presented in the
works of Arthur Miller, Steven King, and many
others. The House of the Seven Gables was
published the following year. The story is based on
the legend of a curse 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 Pyncheons' seven-
gabled mansion. Finally the descendant of the killed
woman marries a young niece of the family, and the
hereditary sin ends. Noteworthy, Hawthore himself
wrote in the preface that the "personage of the tale .
. . are really of the author's own making, or, at all
events, of his own mixing; their virtues can shed no
luster, nor their defects redound, in the remotest
degree, to the discredit of the venerable town of
which they profess to be inhabitants."
The Blithedale Romance (1852), set in a utopian New
England community, examines the flaws inherent in
practical utopianism. Hawthorne had earlier
invested and lived in the Brook Farm Commune,
West Roxbury. This led to speculations, 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.
Hawthorne, who had written a campaign biography
for him, was appointed consul in Liverpool, England.
He lived there for four years, and then spent a year
and half in Italy writing The Marble Faun (1860), a
story about the conflict 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 in his sleep
on May 19, 1864, in Plymouth, N.H. on a trip to the
mountains with his friend Franklin Pierce. His
personal estate amounted to twenty-six thousand
three hundred twenty-two dollars and sixty-one
cents. It included furniture, a two-hundred-dollar
library, several shares in local banks, Union States
coupon bonds, promissory notes, stock in the
Boston & Maine Railroad and in the Jamaica Plain
Gas Company, The Wayside and its seventeen acres,
and copyrights. (Hawthorne: A Life by Brenda Wineapple,
2003, p. 397) Hawthorne was buried in Sleepy Hollow
cemetery. After his death, Sophia Hawthorne edited
and published his notebooks. Modern editions of
these works include many of the sections which she
cut out or altered. The author's son Julian, who
became writer and the president of the Hawthorne
Silver and Iron Mines, Ltd., was convicted in 1912 of
defrauding the public.
For further reading: Hawthorne by Henry James
(1879); Nathaniel Hawthorne and His Wife by Julian
Hawthorne (1884); Hawthorne by Newton Arwin
(1929); Nathaniel Hawthorne: Man and Writer by
Edward Wagenknecht (1961); 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: The Man,
His Tales and Romances by Edward Wagenknecht
(1989); Nathaniel Hawthorne by Charles Swann
(1991); Hawthorne's Narrative Strategies by Michael
Dunne (1995); Hawthorne: A Life by Brenda
Wineapple (2003); Study Guide for The Scarlet Letter
by Nathaniel Hawthorne, edited by Mary R. Reichardt
(2009). 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 published some fantasy, which can be found in
Faded Garden (1985, ed. Jessica Amanda
Salmonson). Suom.: Kirjailijalta on mys ilmestynyt
novellivalikoima Paholainen ksikirjoituksessa (suom.
Arvi Tamminen) ja Onnen laakso (1994)
Selected works:
Fanshawe: A Tale, 1828
My Kinsman, Major Molineux; Roger Malvins
Burial, 1832 (stories)
Young Goodman Brown, 1835
Twice-Told Tales, 1837 (expanded 1842)
- film: 1963, dir. by Sidney Salkow, starring Vincent Price,
Sebastian Cabot, Mari Blanchard, Brett Halsey, Richard
Denning; adaptations of 'Dr Heidegger's Experiment',
'Rappacini'c Daughter' and the prologue to The House of
the Seven Gables
The Gentle Boy: a Thrice Told Tale, 1838
Grandfather's Chair: a History for Youth, 1841
Famous Old People, 1841
Liberty Tree: With the Last Words of
Grandfather's Chair, 1841
Biographical Stories for Children, 1842
Mosses From an Old Manse, 1846 (2 vols.)
The Celestial Rail-road, 1847
The Scarlet Letter: A Romace, 1850
- Tulipunainen kirjain (suom. Aune Brotherus,
1945)
- films: 1926, dir. Victor Sjstrm, starring Lillian Gish; 1972
(Der Scharlachrote Buchstabe), dir. Wim Wenders; 1934,
dir. Robert G. Vignola; 1995, dir. Roland Joff, starring Demi
Moore, Gary Oldman, Robert Duvall
The House of the Seven Gables: A Romance
1851
- Seitsenptyinen talo (suom. Aune Brotherus,
1957)
- film: 1940, dir. Joe May, starring George Sanders,
Margaret Lindsay, Vincent Price, Nan Grey
The Snow Image and Other Twice-Told Tales,
1851
True Stories from History and Biography, 1851
A Wonder Book for Girls and Boys, 1851 (with
engravings by Baker)
The Blithedale Romance, 1852
- Onnen laakso (suomentanut Arvi Tamminen,
1994)
The Life of Franklin Pierce, 1852
Sunday at home, and Other Tales, 1853
Tanglewood Tales for Boys and Girls, 1853
The Marble Faun; or, The Romance Of Monte
Beni, 1860
Our Old Home: A Series Of English Sketches,
1863
The Snow-Image A Childish Miracle, 1864
Passages from the American Notebooks, 1868
(edited by Sophia Hawthorne)
Passages from English Note-Books, 1870
(edited by Sophia Hawthorne)
Hawthorne's Works, 1871-81 (6 vols.; illustrated
library edition)
The Memoir of Nathaniel Hawthorne: With
Stories Now First Published in This Country,
1872
Septimus Felton, or The Elixir of Life, 1872
(fragment)
Passages from the French and Italian
Notebooks, 1872 (edited by Sophia Hawthorne)
The Dolliver Romance, and Other Pieces, 1876
(fragment)
A Virtuoso's Collection, and Other Tales, 1877
Dr. Grimishawe's Secret: A Romance, 1883
(fragment)
The Ancestral Footsteps, 1883 (fragment)
Sketches and Studies, 1883
Tales, Sketches, and Other Papers: With a
Biographical Sketch, 1883
The Complete Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne,
1884 (12 vols., with introductory notes by
George P. Lathrop)
Little Daffydowndilly and Other Stories, 1887
Tales Of The White Hills: And Sketches, 1889
Footprints On the Seashore, 1892 (with etched
illustrations, by Louis K. Harlow)
Colonial Stories: Being Legends Of The Province
House, 1897 (illustrated by Frank T. Merrill)
Dr. Heidegger's Experiment, 1897
Miscellanies: Biographical and Other Sketches
and Letters, 1900
The Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1902 (14
vols.)
The Complete Writings of Nathaniel Hawthorne,
1900 (22 vols.)
Twenty Days with Julian and Little Bunny: A
Diary, 1904
The Miraculous Pitcher, and Biographical
Stories, 1905
Hawthorne's Tanglewood Tales, 1907 (edited
for school use by Robert H. Beggs)
Letters of Hawthorne to William D. Ticknor,
1851-1864, 1910 (2 vols.)
The Tales of Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1927
(selected, with and introduction, by John
Brooks Moore)
Tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1928 (selected
and edited by Carl Van Doren)
The Complete Novels and Selected Tales of
Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1937 (edited, with an
introduction, by Norman Holmes Pearson)
The English Notebooks, 1941 (edited by Randall
Stewart)
Haethorne as Editor, 1941 (selected by Arlin
Turner)
Hawthorne's Short Stories, 1946 (edited by
Newton Arwin)
The Maypole Of Merrymount: From Twice Told
Tales, 1947
The Portable Hawthorne, 1948 (ed., with an
introd. and notes, by Malcolm Cowley)
The Best of Hawthorne, 1951 (edited with
introd. and notes by Mark Van Doren)
The Tale of King Midas and the Golden Touch,
1952 (illustrated with color lithographs by Fritz
Eichenberg)
Complete Short Stories, 1959
The Centenary Edition of the Works of Nathaniel
Hawthorne, 1962-1997 (23 vols., edited by
William Charvat et al.)
Hawthorne: Tales of His Native Land, 1962
(edited by Neal Frank Doubleday)
Short Stories, 1962 (introd. by Louis B. Salomon)
The Complete Greek Stories: from the Wonder
Book and Tanglewood Tales, 1963 (illustrated
by Harold Jones, with a foreword by Kathleen
Lines and a postscript by Roger Lancelyn
Green)
Hawthorne in England: Selections from Our Old
Home and the English Notebooks, 1965 (edited
by Cushing Strout)
Selected Short Stories, 1966 (edited with an
introd. by Alfred Kazin)
Poems, 1967 (edited by Richard E. Peck)
Great Short Works, 1967 (edited, with an introd.,
by Frederick C. Crews)
Pandora's Box: The Paradise of Children, 1967
(illustrated by Paul Galdone)
The Birthmark and Other Stories, 1968 (edited
by Maxine Greene)
Great Writings, 1971 (selected by L. James
Morgan, Jr.)
Love letters of Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1839-1863,
1972 (2 vols., foreword by C. E. Frazer Clark, Jr.)
The American Claimant Manuscripts, 1977
(edited by Edward H. Davidson, Claude M.
Simpson, L. Neal Smith)
The Elixir of Life Manuscripts, 1977 (edited by
Edward H. Davidson, Claude M. Simpson, L. Neal
Smith)
Hawthorne's Lost Notebook, 1835-1841, 1978
(transcript and pref. by Barbara S. Mouffe;
introd. by Hyatt H. Waggoner; foreword by
Charles Ryskamp)
The French and Italian Notebooks, 1980 (edited
by Thomas Woodson)
The Letters, 1984-1987 (4 vols., edited by
Thomas Woodson, L. Neal Smith, Norman
Holmes Pearson)
Rappaccini's Daughter: Chamber Opera in One
Act. 1985 (composed by Sam Dennison; revised
and edited by Georgia Marshall; libretto adapted
by Karen Campbell from the Nathaniel
Hawthorne short story)
Nathaniel Hawthorne's Tales, 1987 (selected
and edited by James McIntosh)
Selected Tales and Sketches, 1987 (selected
and with an introduction by Michael J.
Colacurcio)
Young Goodman Brown and Other Tales, 1987
(edited with an introduction by Brian Harding)
The Consular Letters, 1988 (2 vols., edited by
Bill Ellis)
Hawthorne's American Travel Sketches, 1989
(edited by Alfred Weber, Beth L. Lueck, Dennis
Berthold)
The Complete Novels and Selected Tales of
Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1993- (edited by Norman
Holmes Pearson)
Miscellaneous Prose and Verse, 1994 (edited by
Thomas Woodson, Claude M. Simpson, L. Neal
Smith)
The Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1994
(illustrated by Lori & David Deitrick)
The English Notebooks, 1997 (edited by Thomas
Woodson, Bill Ellis)
Selected Letters of Nathaniel Hawthorne, 2002
(edited by Joel Myerson)
Ordinary Mysteries: The Common Journal of
Nathaniel And Sophia Hawthorne, 1842-1843,
2005 (edited by Joel Myerson)
The Portable Hawthorne, 2005 (edited with an
introduction by William C. Spengemann)
The Business of Reflection: Hawthorne in His
Notebooks, 2009 (edited by Robert Milder and
Randall Fuller)
Selected Stories, 2011 (selected and
introduction by Brenda Wineapple)
Some rights reserved Petri Liukkonen (author) & Ari Pesonen.
Kuusankosken kaupunginkirjasto 2008
Authors' Calendar jonka tekij on Petri Liukkonen on lisensoitu Creative
Commons Nime-Epkaupallinen-Ei muutettuja teoksia 1.0 Suomi
(Finland) lisenssill.
May be used for non-commercial purposes. The author must be
mentioned. The text may not be altered in any way (e.g. by translation).
Click on the logo above for information.