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Nathaniel Hawthorne. 1804-1864. Childhood. Born July 4,1804, in Salem , Massachusetts. Parents were devout Puritans. Mother gave birth alone while father was out at sea. Father died when Hawthorne was four years old. Childhood.
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Nathaniel Hawthorne 1804-1864
Childhood • Born July 4,1804, in Salem, Massachusetts. • Parents were devout Puritans. • Mother gave birth alone while father was out at sea. • Father died when Hawthorne was four years old.
Childhood • Sent to private school once his relatives discovered his storytelling abilities. • Had aspirations to be a writer at an early age. • Sent to Bowdoin College in Maine.
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 (judge) presiding over the trial of the accused witches of Salem (1692).
College in Maine • Classmates included Franklin Pierce and Henry Longfellow • Pierce future President of the USA • Longfellow poet, educator, linguist • Graduated in 1825 Pierce Longfellow
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 • Between1846 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.
Governmental Duties • Hawthorne wrote a biography for Presidential candidate Pierce for his campaign. • President Pierce then appointed Hawthorne to serve as the US Consul to Liverpool, England.
Influences on Hawthorne’s Works • 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. • 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.