Nathaniel Hawthorne

Nathaniel Hawthorne 1804-1864

Family History • His great-great-grandfather, William Hathorne, ordered the whipping of Anne Coleman and four others in the streets of Salem. • His great-grandfather, John Hathorne, was the magistrate presiding over the trial of the accused witches of Salem (1692).

Childhood • Born July 4, 1804 in Salem, MA • Father died when Hawthorne was four years old • Sent to private school once his relatives discovered his storytelling abilities • Sent to Bowdoin College in Maine

College in Maine • Classmates included Franklin Pierce and Henry Longfellow • Pierce- future President of the USA • Longfellow- poet, educator, linguist • Graduated in 1825

Reclusive Years in Salem • He first anonymously published short stories and a novel, Fanshawe. • Hawthorne later formally withdrew most of this early work, discounting it as the work of inexperienced youth. • He burned most of his works from these years.

Back into Society • Editor for The American Magazine of Useful and Entertaining Knowledge in 1836 • Appointed to the Boston Custom House in 1839 • Became engaged to Sophia Peabody, married in 1842

Concord • After his marriage to Sophia, moved to the Old Manse in Concord. • Joined the writing circles of Thoreau, Emerson, and Louisa May Alcott. • The Transcendentalists believed that human existence transcended the sensory realm, and rejected formalism in favor of individual intuition and imagination.

Governmental Offices • Between 1846 and 1849 he served as a surveyor of the Salem Custom House. • He was ousted from that job in 1849, when the incoming political party, The Whigs, fired him to put in their own political appointees • Hawthorne wrote a biography for Presidential candidate Pierce for his campaign. Pierce had attended college with Hawthorne. • President Pierce then appointed Hawthorne to serve as the US Consul to Liverpool, England.

Influences on Hawthorne • His early childhood in Salem and work in the Salem Custom House. • His Puritan family background. • He believed in the existence of the devil. • He believed in determinism, a theory of predestination

Works • Fanshawe (1828) • Mosses from an Old Manse (1846) • The Scarlet Letter (1850) • The House of Seven Gables (1851) • The Snow-Image (1851) • The Blithedale Romance (1852) • Life of Franklin Pierce (1852) • The Marble Faun (1860)

Final Days • Returned to the US from Europe in 1860 • Returned to Concord • Became ill and underwent a loss of literary creativity • Journeyed to the White Mountains hoping to restore his health • Died in Plymouth, NH on May 19, 1864 • Buried in the Sleepy Hollow cemetery in Concord

The Puritans • Puritanism is the religious reform movement of the 16th and 17th centuries seeking to purify the Church of England • Characterized by earnest, intense moral and religious principles such as the necessary covenant relationship with God, the emphasis on preaching and the Holy Spirit’s dominance over reason as the instrument of salvation • America: a Holy Commonwealth and a covenanted community

The Pilgrims • Settlers of Plymouth, MA, the first permanent colony in New England – 1620 • Members of the English Separatist Church, which was a radical faction of Puritanism

The Salem Witch Trials • May – October 1692: Salem, MA • Constitute a series of investigations and persecutions that caused 19 “witches” to be hanged and many others imprisoned • Period of public hysteria generated by false accusations and coerced confessions

Nathaniel Hawthorne