Nathaniel Hawthorne
Born on July 4, 1804, in Salem Massachusetts was the child who would one day become famous for his brilliant literary masterpieces: Nathaniel Hawthorne. He was the middle child of three children in the Hawthorne family and had the unpleasant experience when he was four of having his father, a ship captain, die far away from home. At the father’s death, the Hawthorne family moved across the street and into the house of Nathaniel’s mother’s family house. As Hawthorne grew up, his family members began noticing how intelligent he was and the passion he had for reading. Not long into his young life, he was hit in the foot with a ball which kept him out of school for the better part of two years, giving him the time and seclusion to develop even more his passion for reading. Despite his love of reading, however, he proclaimed shortly before he went to college that he hoped never to be a writer for they made so very little money.
Hawthorne attended Bowdoine College in Maine in 1821, pursuing the subjects of medicine and law. While at Bowdoine, he met a number of people who were destined for fame, including the American Poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and future president Franklin Pierce. After graduating and failing to earn a degree in either medicine or law, Nathaniel returned to the home of his mother’s family where he resided for the next eleven years. Little did he know it, but much was to come out of those eleven years, for better or worse.
Because his grandparents had died and because his sisters had moved away, Hawthorne spent most of his eleven in that house alone. A letter he wrote to Longfellow during this time period stated that he had now become an isolationist, destined never again to fully engage in all of life’s joys and sorrows. However, he also published his first book, Fanshawe, during this time in 1828. Encouraged by his slight success and spurred on by the idea of becoming an author who published multiple stories within one book, he continued writing and soon finished Seven Tales of My Native Land. When no publisher would print it, however, Hawthorne burned it. His luck changed in 1830 when he began writing for a number of literary magazines, a gig that would last him for the next four years. After this he got married to Sophie Peabody and moved to Concord, Connecticut. This stay was short lived, though, and he returned to Salem in three years. Upon his return in 1837, his book Twice Told Tales was published, securing his fame as an author but still paying less than he would have preferred. Franklin Pierce, after being elected the fourteenth president of the United States, helped Hawthorne out of financial trouble by helping him procure a job as Surveyor for the Customs House in Salem in 1846. When the Whigs obtained office in 1848, though, they demanded that every government official who had been elected under the Democrat Pierce be removed, which included Hawthorne. At this point, many of Hawthorne’s Whig friends turned on him leaving him once again in solitude. The controversy behind his firing turned out to be a blessing in disguise, however, and when the Scarlet Letter was published in 1850, people couldn’t wait to get their hands on a book from the mysterious Nathaniel Hawthorne.
The Hawthorne’s Concord residence
Although the Scarlet Letter never gave Hawthorne enough money to retire comfortably on, he did obtain the position of American consul for Liverpool from 1853 to 1857 which provided him with more than enough funds to supply him and his family. After returning home from Europe, he and his wife moved back to Concord where he died a short time later while vacationing with his life-long friend, Pierce.
Nathaniel Hawthorne: Young Goodman Brown 