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Sep 1, 2023 · Nathaniel Hawthorne was an American novelist and short story writer. He is best known for his novels The Scarlet Letter (1850) and The House of the Seven Gables (1851), which are considered classics of American literature. Hawthorne was born in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1804. He was the son of a sea captain and a descendant of the judges who ...
Oct 23, 2014 · Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864) was born in Salem, Massachusetts. He was the descendant of one of the first families to settle in Salem, the Hathornes. By the time he was born, the family name had fallen from its place of distinction. This was due to his great-great-grandfather, William Hathorne, and his great-grandfather, Colonel John Hathorne.
- Overview
- Early years
- First works
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–64) is regarded as one of the greatest fiction writers in American literature. He was a skillful craftsman with an architectonic sense of form, as displayed in the tightly woven structure of his works, and a master of prose style, which he used to clearly reveal his characters’ psychological and moral depths.
What was Nathaniel Hawthorne’s family like?
Nathaniel Hawthorne’s family had lived in Salem, Massachusetts, since the 1600s. One ancestor was a magistrate who, in staunchly defending Puritanism, sentenced a Quaker woman to public whipping. Another was a judge in the Salem witch trials. During the 1700s the family went into decline—perhaps, Nathaniel was to think, because of his ancestors’ behaviour.
What did Nathaniel Hawthorne do for a living?
Nathaniel Hawthorne was a writer but struggled to make a living from his writing. To make ends meet, he resorted to working as a customs officer in Boston, living briefly at the utopian commune Brook Farm, and serving as U.S. consul in Liverpool, Lancashire.
Nathaniel Hawthorne (born July 4, 1804, Salem, Massachusetts, U.S.—died May 19, 1864, Plymouth, New Hampshire) American novelist and short-story writer who was a master of the allegorical and symbolic tale. One of the greatest fiction writers in American literature, he is best known for The Scarlet Letter (1850) and The House of the Seven Gables (1851).
Hawthorne’s ancestors had lived in Salem since the 17th century. His earliest American ancestor, William Hathorne (Nathaniel added the w to the name when he began to write), was a magistrate who had sentenced a Quaker woman to public whipping. He had acted as a staunch defender of Puritan orthodoxy, with its zealous advocacy of a “pure,” unaffected...
In college Hawthorne had excelled only in composition and had determined to become a writer. Upon graduation, he had written an amateurish novel, Fanshawe, which he published at his own expense—only to decide that it was unworthy of him and to try to destroy all copies. Hawthorne, however, soon found his own voice, style, and subjects, and within five years of his graduation he had published such impressive and distinctive stories as “The Hollow of the Three Hills” and “An Old Woman’s Tale.” By 1832, “My Kinsman, Major Molineux” and “Roger Malvin’s Burial,” two of his greatest tales—and among the finest in the language—had appeared. “Young Goodman Brown,” perhaps the greatest tale of witchcraft ever written, appeared in 1835.
His increasing success in placing his stories brought him a little fame. Unwilling to depend any longer on his uncles’ generosity, he turned to a job in the Boston Custom House (1839–40) and for six months in 1841 was a resident at the agricultural cooperative Brook Farm, in West Roxbury, Massachusetts. Even when his first signed book, Twice-Told Tales, was published in 1837, the work had brought gratifying recognition but no dependable income. By 1842, however, Hawthorne’s writing had brought him a sufficient income to allow him to marry Sophia Peabody; the couple rented the Old Manse in Concord and began a happy three-year period that Hawthorne would later record in his essay “The Old Manse.”
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Writers’ Retreats
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Sep 15, 2011 · Nathaniel Hawthorne was a writer from Massachusetts during the 19th century. Nathaniel Hawthorne, who was born and raised in Salem, is best known for his novels The Scarlet Letter and The House of Seven Gables. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s family had deep roots in Salem. As a result, the town and Nathaniel’s Salem ancestors themselves greatly ...
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- He was the college classmate of another famous writer—and a president. In addition to meeting future president Franklin Pierce while attending Maine’s Bowdoin College, Hawthorne was a fellow member of the class of 1825 with Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
- He changed his last name in part to hide his family’s dark past. The novelist’s great-great-grandfather, John Hathorne, was a leading judge of the Salem witch trials, and Hawthorne was haunted by his ancestor’s shameful past.
- Hawthorne was the founding member of a utopian commune. In 1841, Hawthorne became a charter member of Brook Farm, an agricultural collective founded by Unitarian minister George Ripley near Boston.
- He lived in the same houses as two other famed Transcendental authors. In 1842, Hawthorne and his newlywed wife, Sophia, moved into the Old Manse in Concord, Massachusetts, a homestead in which Ralph Waldo Emerson had previously composed the first draft of “Nature,” the essay that launched the Transcendental movement.
Apr 2, 2012 · Nathaniel Hawthorne begins his Scarlett Letter with a short autobiography. After an endearing characterture of his hometown, Salem, Massachusetts, he moves to a less endearing description of his family history. Hawthorne descends from the Puritans in Massachusetts, and in spite of their many good qualities, he bemoans their lack of charity.
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How did Nathaniel Hawthorne inspire 'the inheritance games'?
The second generation of the Hawthorne family played a significant role in shaping the legacy of their ancestors. Two key members of this generation are Avery Grambs and Xander Hawthorne. In the novel “The Inheritance Games”, written by Jennifer Lynn Barnes, their stories unfold in a captivating manner.
