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Nathaniel Hawthorne (July 4, 1804 – May 19, 1864) 
was a 19th century American novelist and short 
story writer. He was born in Salem, Massachusetts 
and died in Plymouth, New Hampshire. Hawthorne's 
father was a sea captain and descendant of John 
Hathorne, one of the judges who oversaw the Salem 
Witch Trials. Hawthorne's father died at sea in 
1808, when Hawthorne was only four years old, and 
Nathaniel was raised secluded from the world by 
his mother.

Hawthorne attended Bowdoin College in Maine from 
1821–1824 where he became friends with Longfellow 
and future president Franklin Pierce.

In 1842, he married illustrator and transcendentalist 
Sophia Peabody, and the two moved to the Old Manse 
in Concord, Massachusetts, where they lived for 
three years. Their neighbors in Concord included 
Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. Like 
Hawthorne, Sophia was a reclusive person. She was, 
in fact, bedridden with headaches until her sister 
introduced her to Hawthorne, after which her 
headaches seem to have abated. The Hawthornes 
enjoyed a long marriage, and Sophia was greatly 
enamored with her husband's work. In one of her 
journals, she writes: "I am always so dazzled and 
bewildered with the richness, the depth, 
the...jewels of beauty in his productions that I 
am always looking forward to a second reading 
where I can ponder and muse and fully take in the 
miraculous wealth of thoughts" (Jan 14th 1951, 
Journal of Sophia Hawthorne. Berg Collection NY 
Public Library).

The two had three children: Una, Julian, and Rose. 
Una suffered from mental illness and died young. 
Julian moved out west and wrote a book about his 
father. Hawthorne died 1864 May 19 in Plymouth, 
N.H. on a trip to the mountains with his friend 
Franklin Pierce.

Writings
Hawthorne is best-known today for his many short 
stories (he called them "tales") and his four 
major romances of 1850–60: The Scarlet Letter 
(1850), The House of the Seven Gables (1851), 
The Blithedale Romance (1852), and The Marble 
Faun (1860). (Another book-length romance, 
Fanshawe, was published anonymously in 1828.)

Before publishing his first collection of tales 
in 1837, Hawthorne wrote scores of short stories 
and sketches, publishing them anonymously or 
pseudonymously in periodicals such as The 
New-England Magazine and The United States 
Democratic Review. Only after collecting a number 
of his short stories into the two-volume 
Twice-Told Tales in 1837 did Hawthorne begin to 
attach his name to his works.

Much of Hawthorne's work is set in colonial New 
England, and many of his short stories have been 
read as moral allegories influenced by his 
Puritan background. "Ethan Brand" (1850) tells 
the story of a lime-burner who sets off to find 
the Unpardonable Sin, and in doing so, commits 
it. One of Hawthorne's most famous tales, "The 
Birth-Mark" (1843), concerns a young doctor who 
removes a birthmark from his wife's face, an 
operation which kills her. Other well-known 
tales include "Rappaccini's Daughter" (1844), 
"My Kinsman, Major Molineux" (1832), "The 
Minister's Black Veil" (1836), and "Young Goodman 
Brown" (1835). "The Maypole of Merrymount" 
recounts a most interesting encounter between 
the Puritans and the forces of anarchy and 
hedonism.

Recent criticism has focused on Hawthorne's 
narrative voice, treating it as a 
self-conscious rhetorical construction, not to 
be conflated with Hawthorne's own voice. Such 
an approach complicates the long-dominant 
tradition of regarding Hawthorne as a gloomy, 
guilt-ridden moralist.

Hawthorne enjoyed a brief friendship with American 
novelist Herman Melville beginning on August 5, 
1850, when the two authors met at a picnic 
hosted by a mutual friend. Melville had just read 
Hawthorne's short story collection Mosses from 
an Old Manse, which Melville later praised in a 
famous review, "Hawthorne and His Mosses." 
Melville's letters to Hawthorne provide insight 
into the composition of Moby-Dick. Hawthorne's 
letters to Melville did not survive.

Edgar Allan Poe wrote important, though largely 
unflattering reviews of both Twice-Told Tales 
and Mosses from an Old Manse.

Major Works

Novel-length Romances
Fanshawe (1828; recovered 1876) 
The Scarlet Letter (1850) 
The House of the Seven Gables (1851) 
The Blithedale Romance (1852) 
The Marble Faun (1860) 

Short Story Collections
Twice-Told Tales (1837; expanded version 1851) 
"The Minister's Black Veil" (1836) 
"Dr. Heidegger's Experiment" (1837) 
Mosses from an Old Manse (1846; expanded version 
1854) 
"Young Goodman Brown" (1835) 
"The Birth-Mark" (1843) 
"Rappaccini's Daughter" (1844) 
The Snow-Image, and Other Twice-Told Tales (1852) 
"Ethan Brand" (1850) 
"My Kinsman, Major Molineux" (1832) 

Works for Children
True Stories from History and Biography (the Whole 
History of Grandfather's Chair) (1851) 
A Wonder-Book for Boys and Girls (1852) 
Tanglewood Tales (1853) 

Miscellaneous Publications
The Life of Franklin Pierce (1852)