Early life , 1841 (Peabody Essex Museum) Nathaniel Hathorne, as his name was originally spelled, was born on July 4, 1804, in
Salem, Massachusetts;
his birthplace is preserved and open to the public. His great-great-great-grandfather,
William Hathorne, was a
Puritan and the first of the family to emigrate from England. He settled in
Dorchester, Massachusetts, before moving to Salem. There he became 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, Hawthorne's great-great-grandfather
John Hathorne, was one of the judges who oversaw the
Salem witch trials. Hawthorne probably added the "w" to his surname in his early twenties, shortly after graduating from college, in an effort to disassociate himself from his notorious forebears. Hawthorne's father Nathaniel Hathorne Sr. was a sea captain who died in 1808 of
yellow fever in
Dutch Suriname; he had been a member of the
East India Marine Society. After his death, his widow moved with young Nathaniel, his older sister
Elizabeth, and their younger sister Louisa to live with relatives named the Mannings 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. , built in 1804 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. Years later, Hawthorne looked back at his time in Maine fondly: "Those were delightful days, for that part of the country was wild then, with only scattered clearings, and nine tenths of it primeval woods." In 1819, he was sent back to Salem for school and soon complained of homesickness and being too far from his mother and sisters. He distributed seven issues of
The Spectator to his family in August and September 1820 for fun. The homemade newspaper was written by hand and included essays, poems, and news featuring the young author's adolescent humor. Hawthorne's uncle, Robert Manning, insisted that the boy attend college, despite Hawthorne's protests. With the financial support of his uncle, Hawthorne was sent to
Bowdoin College in 1821, partly because of family connections in the area, and also because of its relatively inexpensive tuition rate. Hawthorne met future president
Franklin Pierce on the way to Bowdoin, at the stage stop in Portland, and the two became fast friends. He graduated with the class of 1825, and later described his college experience to
Richard Henry Stoddard:
Early career , Custom House Street, where Hawthorne worked c. 1839–40 Hawthorne's first published work,
Fanshawe: A Tale, based on his experiences at Bowdoin College, appeared anonymously in October 1828, printed at the author's own expense of $100. Although it received generally positive reviews, it did not sell well. He published several minor pieces in the
Salem Gazette. In 1836, Hawthorne served as the editor of the
American Magazine of Useful and Entertaining Knowledge. At the time, he boarded with poet
Thomas Green Fessenden on Hancock Street in Beacon Hill in
Boston. 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 rented a room from
George Stillman Hillard, business partner of
Charles Sumner. Hawthorne wrote in the comparative obscurity of what he called his "owl's nest" in the family home. As he looked back on this period of his life, he wrote: "I have not lived, but only dreamed about living." 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 , 1830 (Peabody Essex Museum) While at Bowdoin, Hawthorne wagered a bottle of
Madeira wine with his friend Jonathan Cilley that Cilley would get married before Hawthorne did. By 1836, he had won the bet, but he did not remain a bachelor for life. He had public flirtations with Mary Silsbee and
Elizabeth Peabody, then he began pursuing Peabody's sister, the
illustrator and
transcendentalist Sophia Peabody. He joined the transcendentalist
Utopian community at
Brook Farm in 1841, not because he agreed with the experiment but because it helped him save money to marry Sophia. He paid a $1,000 deposit and was put in charge of shoveling the hill of manure referred to as "the Gold Mine". He left later that year, though his Brook Farm adventure became an inspiration for his novel
The Blithedale Romance. Hawthorne married Sophia Peabody on July 9, 1842, at a ceremony in the Peabody parlor on West Street in Boston. The couple moved to
The Old Manse in
Concord, Massachusetts, where they lived for three years. His neighbor
Ralph Waldo Emerson invited him into his social circle, but Hawthorne was almost pathologically shy and stayed silent at gatherings. At the Old Manse, Hawthorne wrote most of the tales collected in
Mosses from an Old Manse. Like Hawthorne, Sophia was a reclusive person. Throughout her early life, she had frequent
migraines and underwent several experimental medical treatments. She was mostly bedridden until her sister introduced her to Hawthorne, after which her headaches seem to have abated. The Hawthornes enjoyed a long and happy marriage. He referred to her as his "Dove" and wrote that she "is, in the strictest sense, my sole companion; and I need no other—there is no vacancy in my mind, any more than in my heart ... Thank God that I suffice for her boundless heart!" Sophia greatly admired her husband's work. She wrote in one of her journals: 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. Poet
Ellery Channing came to the Old Manse for help on the first anniversary of the Hawthornes' marriage. A local teenager named Martha Hunt had drowned herself in the river and Hawthorne's boat
Pond Lily was needed to find her body. Hawthorne helped recover the corpse, which he described as "a spectacle of such perfect horror ... She was the very image of death-agony". The incident later inspired a scene in his novel
The Blithedale Romance. The Hawthornes had three children. Their first was daughter Una, born March 3, 1844; her name was a reference to
The Faerie Queene, to the displeasure of family members. Hawthorne wrote to a friend, "I find it a very sober and serious kind of happiness that springs from the birth of a child ... There is no escaping it any longer. I have business on earth now, and must look about me for the means of doing it." In October 1845, the Hawthornes moved to Salem. In 1846, their son
Julian was born. Hawthorne wrote to his sister Louisa on June 22, 1846: "A small troglodyte made his appearance here at ten minutes to six o'clock this morning, who claimed to be your nephew." Daughter
Rose was born in May 1851, and Hawthorne called her his "autumnal flower".
Middle years of Hawthorne,
Whipple & Black, 1848 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 had difficulty writing during this period, as he admitted to Longfellow: I am trying to resume my pen ... Whenever I sit alone, or walk alone, I find myself dreaming about stories, as of old; but these forenoons in the Custom House undo all that the afternoons and evenings have done. I should be happier if I could write. This employment, like his earlier appointment to the custom house in Boston, was vulnerable to the politics of the
spoils system. Hawthorne was a Democrat and lost this job due to the change of administration in Washington after the presidential election of 1848. He wrote a letter of protest to the
Boston Daily Advertiser, which was attacked by the
Whigs and supported by the Democrats, making Hawthorne's dismissal a much-talked about event in New England. He was deeply affected by the death of his mother in late July, calling it "the darkest hour I ever lived". He was appointed the corresponding secretary of the Salem Lyceum in 1848. Guests who came to speak that season included Emerson, Thoreau,
Louis Agassiz, and
Theodore Parker. Hawthorne returned to writing and published
The Scarlet Letter in mid-March 1850, including a preface that refers to his three-year tenure in the Custom House and makes several allusions to local politicians—who did not appreciate their treatment. 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. The book became a best-seller in the United States and initiated his most lucrative period as a writer. while 20th-century writer
D. H. Lawrence said that there could be no more perfect work of the American imagination than
The Scarlet Letter. Hawthorne and his family moved to a small red farmhouse near
Lenox, Massachusetts, at the end of March 1850. He became friends with
Herman Melville beginning on August 5, 1850, when the authors met at a picnic hosted by a mutual friend. Melville had just read Hawthorne's short story collection
Mosses from an Old Manse, and his unsigned review of the collection was printed in
The Literary World on August 17 and 24 titled "Hawthorne and His Mosses". Melville wrote that these stories revealed a dark side to Hawthorne, "shrouded in blackness, ten times black". He was composing his novel
Moby-Dick at the time, Hawthorne's time in the
Berkshires was very productive. While there, he wrote
The House of the Seven Gables (1851), which poet and critic
James Russell Lowell said was better than
The Scarlet Letter and called "the most valuable contribution to New England history that has been made." He also wrote
The Blithedale Romance (1852), his only work written in the first person. Nevertheless, poet
Ellery Channing reported that Hawthorne "has suffered much living in this place". The family enjoyed the scenery of the Berkshires, although Hawthorne did not enjoy the winters in their small house. They left on November 21, 1851.
The Wayside and Europe In May 1852, the Hawthornes returned to Concord where they lived until July 1853. Their neighbors in Concord included Emerson and
Henry David Thoreau. In July 1852, his younger sister, Maria Louisa, drowned in the disaster of the burning of the steamboat
Henry Clay. Hawthorne completed
The Life of Franklin Pierce, the campaign biography of his friend, which depicted him as "a man of peaceful pursuits".
Horace Mann said, "If he makes out Pierce to be a great man or a brave man, it will be the greatest work of fiction he ever wrote." He also left out Pierce's drinking habits, despite rumors of his alcoholism, and emphasized Pierce's belief that slavery could not "be remedied by human contrivances" but would, over time, "vanish like a dream". With Pierce's election as
President, Hawthorne was rewarded in 1853 with the position of United States
consul in
Liverpool shortly after the publication of
Tanglewood Tales. The role was considered the most lucrative foreign service position at the time, described by Hawthorne's wife as "second in dignity to the Embassy in London". 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. As his journal attests, to attend his place of employment at the United States consulate in Liverpool, Hawthorne was a regular passenger on the steamboat operating between Rock Ferry and Liverpool, which departed from the Rock Ferry Slipway at the end of Bedford Road. His appointment ended in 1857 at the close of the
Pierce administration. The Hawthorne family toured France and Italy until 1860. During his time in Italy, the previously clean-shaven Hawthorne grew a bushy mustache. The family returned to The Wayside in 1860, and that year saw the publication of
The Marble Faun, his first new book in seven years. Hawthorne admitted that he had aged considerably, referring to himself as "wrinkled with time and trouble".
Later years and death At the outset of the
American Civil War, Hawthorne traveled with
William D. Ticknor 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. Failing health prevented him from completing several more romance novels. Hawthorne was suffering from pain in his stomach and insisted on a recuperative trip with his friend Franklin Pierce, though his neighbor Bronson Alcott was concerned that Hawthorne was too ill. While on a tour of the
White Mountains, he died in his sleep on May 19, 1864, in
Plymouth, New Hampshire. Pierce sent a
telegram to
Elizabeth Peabody asking her to inform Mrs. Hawthorne in person. Mrs. Hawthorne was too saddened by the news to handle the funeral arrangements herself. Hawthorne's son Julian, a freshman at
Harvard College, learned of his father's death the next day; coincidentally, he was initiated into the
Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity on the same day by being blindfolded and placed in a coffin. Longfellow wrote a tribute poem to Hawthorne published in 1866 called "
The Bells of Lynn". Hawthorne was buried on what is now known as "Authors' Ridge" in
Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, Concord,
Massachusetts. Pallbearers included Longfellow, Emerson, Alcott,
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.,
James T. Fields, and
Edwin Percy Whipple. Emerson wrote of the funeral: "I thought there was a tragic element in the event, that might be more fully rendered—in the painful solitude of the man, which, I suppose, could no longer be endured, & he died of it." His wife Sophia and daughter Una were originally buried in England. However, in June 2006, they were reinterred in plots adjacent to Hawthorne. ==Writings==