|
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 Hathorn who was 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 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.
Writings
Hawthorne is best-known today for his many short stories (Hawthorne 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: he learns too late that it is the birthmark, the imperfect blemish itself, that has kept her alive.
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).
Recent criticism has focussed 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.
With American novelist
Herman Melville Hawthorne enjoyed a brief friendship, which began 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
Short Story Collections
- Twice-Told
Tales (1827; expanded version 1851)
- Mosses from an Old Manse (1846; expanded version 1854)
- The Snow-Image, and Other Twice-Told Tales (1852)
Works for Children
- A Wonder-Book for Boys and Girls (1852)
- Tanglewood
Tales (1853)
Miscellaneous Publications
- The Life of Franklin Pierce (1852)
External links
- Eric Eldred's excellent Hawthorne site at Eldritch Press contains all of Hawthorne's
works, notes on the writings, annotated editions,and lots of other information.
- The Hawthorne in Salem
Website was funded in May of 2000 by a three-year
grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities and is a collaborative effort of North Shore Community College in Danvers,
Massachusetts, and three Salem, Massachusetts museums with important Hawthorne collections.
- Herman Melville's appreciation, "Hawthorne and His Mosses" (1850)
- Henry James's important book-length study, Hawthorne (1879)
|