Nathanel Hawthorn

Nathaniel Hawthorn was born in Salem Massachusetts on July 4, 1804. His birthplace is now a museum. His father, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Senior was a sea captain who died in 1808. His death was caused by yellow fever when Nathaniel Junior was four years old. His mother made him live without outside contact. Hawthorne said these were the happiest years of his life, but also gave him the habit of wanting to be alone.

He attended Bowdoin College in Maine, which was financed by his uncle. His friends and classmates were Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and future president Franklin Pierce. He wrote many things before he was published in 1837. Many feel that Hawthorne's aloneness resulted in a much meditated fiction.

In 1839, Hawthorne was hired as a weigher and gauger at the Boston Custom House. He also became engaged to Sophia Peabody, who was a illustrator and transcendentalist. To possibly find a home for him and his fiancй he joined the transcendentalist utopian community. He left shortly after he joined, but his time there inspired The Blithedale Romance. He and Sophia married in 1842 and moved to Concord Massachusetts. The neighbors there were Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau.

Sophia was also a reclusive person, but after her marriage to Hawthorne, they spent a very long and happy marriage. She loved his works very much. She and Nathaniel had three children.

In 1846 he was appointed surveyor at the Salem Custom House. This job was very political and he lost his job when the administration changed in 1848. His carreer as a novelist boomed after he wrote The Scarlett Letter in 1850. The preface in this book refers to his time at the Salem Custom House. The House at Seven Gables and The Blithedale Romance followed. Much of his works are set in colonial New England and many of his short stories have been read as moral allegories.

He also wrote the campaign biography of his old friend Franklin