Nathaniel Hawthorne
A brooding chronicler of America's Puritan conscience, he wove tales of guilt, sin, and secrecy that haunt the national imagination.
1804–1864 (age 60)·American author·Birthday: July 4
Biography
Nathaniel Hawthorne emerged from a family shadowed by the Salem witch trials, a legacy that seeped into the very fabric of his writing. After a reclusive period he called his 'owl's nest' years, he produced masterworks like 'The Scarlet Letter' and 'The House of the Seven Gables.' His prose, dense with symbolism and psychological insight, dissected the dark undercurrents of America's founding ideals, exploring how hidden sins and societal repression warp the human soul. While his friend Herman Melville chased the leviathan, Hawthorne charted the murkier waters of the human heart, establishing a template for American Gothic literature that influenced generations to come.
#1 When Nathaniel Was Born
The biggest hits of 1804
Nathaniel's Life & Times
The world at every milestone
1804Born
1809Started school
1817Became a teenager
1820Could drive
1822Could vote
1825Turned 21
1834Turned 30
1844Turned 40
1854Turned 50
1864Turned 60
President: Abraham Lincoln
Key Achievements
- Published 'The Scarlet Letter' in 1850, a defining novel of American literature that examines sin and redemption in Puritan New England.
- Wrote 'The House of the Seven Gables,' a novel that uses a cursed family mansion to explore themes of ancestral guilt and atonement.
- Served as the United States Consul in Liverpool, a political appointment secured by his college friend, President Franklin Pierce.
- Authored numerous influential short stories, including 'Young Goodman Brown' and 'The Minister's Black Veil.'
Did You Know?
He added a 'w' to his family's original surname, 'Hathorne,' to distance himself from an ancestor who was a judge in the Salem witch trials.
He was a classmate and close friend of future U.S. President Franklin Pierce at Bowdoin College.
He lived for a time at the transcendentalist utopian community Brook Farm, an experience he later fictionalized in his novel 'The Blithedale Romance.'
“No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true.”
