Nathaniel Hawthorne

Hawthorne got married to Sophia Peabody on July 9, 1842, in the Peabody parlor on West Street, Boston.

Soon after their marriage, the couple moved to The Old Manse in Concord, Massachusetts, where Hawthorne wrote his ‘Mosses from an Old Manse’.

The couple had two daughters, Una (named after a character in Spenser’s ‘The Faerie Queene’) and Rose and a son, Julian.

Nathaniel Hawthorne was born on July 4, 1804, in Salem, Massachusetts to Nathaniel Hathorne, Sr. and Elizabeth Clark Hathorne.

His father was a sea captain and a member of the East India Marine Society. He died in 1808 of yellow fever in Suriname, leaving a widow and three young children. Nathaniel was only four when his father died.

His family moved in with his maternal relatives, the Mannings, in Salem.

On November 10, 1813, young Hawthorne was hit on the leg while playing. He was bedridden for a year. It was during this time that he became an avid reader and wanted to take up writing as a profession.

In 1821, he joined the Bowdoin College. During this period, he became friends with Franklin Pierce, H.W. Longfellow, and Horatio Bridge. He graduated in the year 1825.

He wrote his first novel ‘Fanshawe’ in 1828 but later attempted to suppress it as he felt this work did not match the standard of his later works.

Wwithin five years of his graduation, his writing skills matured and by 1832, he had published some of his finest tales like ‘The Hollow of the Three Hills’, ‘My Kinsman, Major Molineuz’ and ‘Roger Malvin’s Burial’ in various magazines and annuals.

From 1836 to 1839, Hawthorne served as the editor of the ‘American Magazine of Useful and Entertaining Knowledge’.

In 1837, his first signed book ‘Twice-Told Tales’ came out, which was a collection of all his previously published short stories.

On January 17, 1839, he was appointed as weigher and gauger at the Boston Custom House at a salary of $1,500 a year. Hawthorne served there for a year.

‘The Scarlet Letter’ (1850) is considered to be Hawthorne’s masterpiece. It was one of the first mass-produced books in America and sold 2,500 volumes within ten days. ‘The House of the Seven Gables’ (1851) was another successful work which was based on the legend of a curse in Hawthorne’s own family. Apart from these, ‘Mosses from an old Manse’ (1846), ‘The Blithedale Romance’ (1852) and ‘The Marble Fawn’ (1860) are his most notable works.