Nathaniel Hawthorne facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Nathaniel Hawthorne
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Hawthorne in the 1860s
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| Born | Nathaniel Hathorne July 4, 1804 Salem, Massachusetts, U.S. |
| Died | May 19, 1864 (aged 59) Plymouth, New Hampshire, U.S. |
| Language | English |
| Alma mater | Bowdoin College |
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Sophia Peabody
(m. 1842) |
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Nathaniel Hawthorne (July 4, 1804 – May 19, 1864) was an American novelist and short story writer. 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.
Contents
Early life
Hawthorne was born on July 4, 1804, in Salem, Massachusetts. His father, Nathaniel Hathorne Sr., was a sea captain who died in 1808 of yellow fever in Dutch Suriname. After his death, his widow moved with young Nathaniel, his older sister Elizabeth, and their younger sister Louisa to live with relatives in Salem, where they lived for 10 years. Young Hawthorne was hit on the leg while playing "bat and ball" on November 10, 1813, and he became lame and bedridden for a year, though several physicians could find nothing wrong with him.
In the summer of 1816, the family lived as boarders with farmers before moving to a home recently built specifically for them by Hawthorne's uncles Richard and Robert Manning in Raymond, Maine, near Sebago Lake. In 1819, he was sent back to Salem for school and soon complained of homesickness and being too far from his mother and sisters.
With the financial support of his uncle, Hawthorne was sent to Bowdoin College in 1821.
Early career
Hawthorne published his first work, Fanshawe: A Tale, anonymously in October 1828. Although it received generally positive reviews, it did not sell well.
In 1836, Hawthorne served as the editor of the American Magazine of Useful and Entertaining Knowledge. 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. During his time there, 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.
Marriage and family
Hawthorne married Sophia Peabody on July 9, 1842. The couple lived in The Old Manse in Concord, Massachusetts. There Hawthorne wrote most of the tales collected in Mosses from an Old Manse.
The Hawthornes had three children. Their first was daughter Una, born March 3, 1844. In 1846, their son Julian was born. Daughter Rose was born in May 1851, and Hawthorne called her his "autumnal flower".
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. He lost this job due to the change of administration in Washington after the presidential election of 1848. Shortly afterwards he was appointed the corresponding secretary of the Salem Lyceum.
Hawthorne returned to writing and published The Scarlet Letter in mid-March 1850. It was one of the first mass-produced books in America, selling 2,500 volumes within ten days and earning Hawthorne $1,500 over 14 years.
In March 1850, Hawthorne and his family moved to a small red farmhouse near Lenox, Massachusetts. While there, he wrote The House of the Seven Gables (1851) and 'The Blithedale Romance (1852), his only work written in the first person. He also published A Wonder-Book for Girls and Boys in 1851, a collection of short stories retelling myths which he had been thinking about writing since 1846.
The Wayside
In May 1852, the Hawthornes returned to Concord where they lived until July 1853. In February, they bought The Hillside, a home previously inhabited by Amos Bronson Alcott and his family, and renamed it The Wayside. Their neighbors in Concord included Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. That year, Hawthorne wrote The Life of Franklin Pierce, the campaign biography of his friend.
With Pierce's election as President, Hawthorne was rewarded in 1853 with the position of United States consul in Liverpool. During this period he and his family lived in the Rock Park estate in Rock Ferry in one of the houses directly adjacent to Tranmere Beach on the Wirral shore of the River Mersey. His appointment ended in 1857 at the close of the Pierce administration.
The family returned to The Wayside in 1860, and that year saw the publication of The Marble Faun.
Death
Hawthorne died in his sleep on May 19, 1864, in Plymouth, New Hampshire while on a tour of the White Mountains. He was buried on what is now known as "Authors' Ridge" in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, Concord, Massachusetts.
His wife Sophia and daughter Una were originally buried in England. However, in June 2006, they were reinterred in plots adjacent to Hawthorne.
Literary style and themes
Hawthorne's works belong to romanticism or, more specifically, dark romanticism. Many of his works are inspired by Puritan New England.
Hawthorne was predominantly a short story writer in his early career. His four major romances were written between 1850 and 1860: The Scarlet Letter (1850), The House of the Seven Gables (1851), The Blithedale Romance (1852) and The Marble Faun (1860). Another novel-length romance, Fanshawe, was published anonymously in 1828. Hawthorne also wrote nonfiction. In 2008, the Library of America selected Hawthorne's "A show of wax-figures" for inclusion in its two-century retrospective of American True Crime.
Interesting facts about Nathaniel Hawthorne
- William Hathorne, the author's great-great-great-grandfather, was an important member of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and held many political positions, including magistrate and judge, becoming infamous for his harsh sentencing. William's son and the author's great-great-grandfather John Hathorne was one of the judges who oversaw the Salem witch trials.
- Nathaniel's last name was originally spelled "Hathorne", with the "w" added shortly after his graduation from college. Hawthorne did so in an effort to dissociate himself from his notorious ancestors.
- Hawthorne enjoyed a long and happy marriage to Sophia Peabody. He referred to his wife as his "Dove".
- At the outset of the American Civil War, Hawthorne traveled to Washington, D.C., where he met Abraham Lincoln and other notable figures. He wrote about his experiences in the essay "Chiefly About War Matters" in 1862.
Nathaniel Hawthorne quotes
- "Words — so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them."
- "Happiness in this world, when it comes, comes incidentally. Make it the object of pursuit, and it leads us a wild-goose chase, and is never attained."
- "It is a curious subject of observation and inquiry, whether hatred and love be not the same thing at bottom."
- "No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true."
- "The young have less charity for aged follies than the old for those of youth."
Selected works
According to Hawthorne scholar Rita K. Gollin, the "definitive edition" of Hawthorne's works is The Centenary Edition of the Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne, edited by William Charvat and others, published by The Ohio State University Press in twenty-three volumes between 1962 and 1997. Tales and Sketches (1982) was the second volume to be published in the Library of America, Collected Novels (1983) the tenth.
Novels
- Fanshawe (published anonymously, 1828)
- The Scarlet Letter, A Romance (1850)
- The House of the Seven Gables, A Romance (1851)
- The Blithedale Romance (1852)
- The Marble Faun: Or, The Romance of Monte Beni (1860) (as Transformation: Or, The Romance of Monte Beni, UK publication, same year)
- The Dolliver Romance (1863) (unfinished)
- Septimius Felton; or, the Elixir of Life (unfinished, published in the Atlantic Monthly, 1872)
- Doctor Grimshawe's Secret: A Romance (unfinished, with preface and notes by Julian Hawthorne, 1882)
Short story collections
- Twice-Told Tales (1837)
- Legends of the Province House (1838-1839)
- Grandfather's Chair (1840)
- Mosses from an Old Manse (1846)
- A Wonder-Book for Girls and Boys (1851)
- The Snow-Image, and Other Twice-Told Tales (1852)
- Tanglewood Tales (1853)
- The Dolliver Romance and Other Pieces (1876)
- The Great Stone Face and Other Tales of the White Mountains (1889)
Selected short stories
- "The Hollow of the Three Hills" (1830)
- "Roger Malvin's Burial" (1832)
- "My Kinsman, Major Molineux" (1832)
- "Young Goodman Brown" (1835)
- "The Minister's Black Veil" (1836)
- "The Gray Champion" (1835)
- "The White Old Maid" (1835)
- "Wakefield" (1835)
- "The Ambitious Guest" (1835)
- "The Man of Adamant" (1837)
- "The May-Pole of Merry Mount" (1837)
- "The Great Carbuncle" (1837)
- "Dr. Heidegger's Experiment" (1837)
- "A Virtuoso's Collection" (May 1842)
- "The Birth-Mark" (March 1843)
- "The Celestial Railroad" (1843)
- "Egotism; or, The Bosom-Serpent" (1843)
- "Earth's Holocaust" (1844)
- "Rappaccini's Daughter" (1844)
- "P.'s Correspondence" (1845)
- "The Artist of the Beautiful" (1846)
- "Fire Worship" (1846)
- "Ethan Brand" (1850)
- "The Great Stone Face" (1850)
- "Feathertop" (1852)
Nonfiction
- Life of Franklin Pierce (1852)
- Our Old Home (1863)
- Passages from the English Note-Books (1870)
- Passages from the French and Italian Note-Books (1871)
- Passages from the American Note-Books (1879)
- Twenty Days with Julian & Little Bunny, a Diary (written 1851, published 1904), an excerpt from Passages from the American Note-Books.
See also
In Spanish: Nathaniel Hawthorne para niños
