Nathanial Hawthorne, an American short story and novelist, is best known for his novel The Scarlet Letter. He has proven to be a prominent person in the development of American literature. He was born in Salem, Massachusetts in 1804. His father, a descendant of John Hawthorne, a judge in the Salem Witch trials, was a sea captain who died of yellow fever when he was only four. Hawthorne grew up shy and secluded from society with his widowed mother. He enjoyed the recluse lifestyle, and regularly took walks in the woods alone and wrote detailed accounts of his adventures.

Hawthorne graduated Bowdoin College in Maine in 1824, where he was friends with Longfellow and future president Franklin Pierce. After graduation, he dedicated himself to writing, but struggled until 1837 when his collection of short stories, �¢??Twice-Told Tales,�¢?�� was published.

Hawthorne soon got involved in the transcendentalist movement, befriending Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. He lived at Brook Farm, an experimental utopian community that proved to be unsuccessful and then married Sophia Peabody in 1842. In 1846, he was appointed surveyor at the Salem Custom House, and his unhappiness there inspired parts of his most famous book, The Scarlet Letter (1850). His other famous works include The House of the Seven Gables (1851), The Snow-Image and Other Twice-Told Tales (1851), The Blithedale Romance (1852) and The Marble Faun (1860). Much of his work takes place in colonial New England and is influenced by his Puritan background.

Nathaniel Hawthorne died in Plymouth, New Hampshire on May 19, 1864.

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Articles About Hawthorne, Nathaniel

Nathaniel Hawthorne: Hawthorne's Struggle and Romance with Salem	November 26, 2007
Nathaniel Hawthorne called himself a writer of romances, allegorical tales of times long past with supernatural overtones. Yet many of the stories he wrote came right out of the pages of his own family history in Salem, Massachusetts. Hawthorne was still struggling to relieve himself of the heavy psychic burden of his family's past.