Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864) was an American novelist and short-story writer from Salem, Massachusetts. The Scarlet Letter and The House of the Seven Gables explore guilt, sin and the Puritan past of New England.
Works
The Scarlet Letter, The House of the Seven Gables
Salem
Nathaniel Hathorne was born in Salem on 4 July 1804; he later added a 'w' to his name. One of his ancestors, John Hathorne, had been a judge in the Salem witch trials of 1692, a family past that haunted his work. His father, a sea captain, died when he was four.
He studied at Bowdoin College, where he became friends with Longfellow and with Franklin Pierce, the future president. Back in Salem, he spent some twelve years writing in near seclusion, publishing tales in magazines.
Tales and odd jobs
His collection Twice-Told Tales (1837) was praised by Longfellow and Edgar Allan Poe. To earn a living he worked at the Boston Custom House, then joined, briefly, the utopian community of Brook Farm.
In 1842 he married Sophia Peabody, a painter, and they lived at the Old Manse in Concord, among Emerson and Thoreau. From 1846 to 1849 he was surveyor of the Salem Custom House, a post he lost with a change of government.
The romances
The Scarlet Letter (1850), the story of Hester Prynne, condemned to wear a scarlet A for adultery in seventeenth-century Boston, was an immediate success. The House of the Seven Gables (1851) and The Blithedale Romance (1852) followed, as well as books for children.
When Franklin Pierce became president, Hawthorne, who had written his campaign biography, was appointed consul in Liverpool. After years in England and Italy, where he wrote The Marble Faun, he returned to Concord and died on 19 May 1864, during a journey with Pierce.
Anecdotes
Adding a letter
Hawthorne changed the spelling of his family name, Hathorne, by adding a 'w' while still a young man. Biographers often see it as a way of distancing himself from his ancestor, the witch-trial judge John Hathorne.
The Custom House
The Scarlet Letter opens with a long sketch, The Custom-House, in which Hawthorne pretends to have found a faded scarlet A and a manuscript in the attic of the Salem Custom House where he had worked.
Frequently asked questions
What is The Scarlet Letter about?
In Puritan Boston, Hester Prynne must wear a scarlet letter A as punishment for adultery and refuses to name the father of her child, the respected minister Arthur Dimmesdale.
Is the House of the Seven Gables a real house?
Yes. A seventeenth-century house in Salem, belonging to a cousin of Hawthorne, is associated with the novel and is now a museum.
Who were Hawthorne's friends?
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and the future president Franklin Pierce, from his student days, and later the writers Herman Melville, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau.