Nathaniel Hawthorne

Hawthorne, Nathaniel 

Born July 4, 1804, in Salem, Mass.; died May 19, 1864, in Plymouth, N.H. American writer.

Hawthorne graduated from Bowdoin College in 1825 and later worked in the customhouses in Boston and Salem. From 1853 to 1857 he was US consul in Great Britain. Hawthorne passed through a brief period of enchantment with Transcendentalism, and in 1841 he lived in the Fourierist commune at Brook Farm. He told the story of his disenchantment with Fourierism in the novel The Blithedale Romance (1852; Russian translation, 1913). Together with E. A. Poe, Hawthorne is a classic writer of the American short story; it is his short stories that form the most important part of his literary legacy, such as the collections Twice-Told Tales (1837 and 1842) and Mosses From an Old Manse (1846) and the collections of short stories and fairy tales for children.

Hawthorne’s work shows the profound influence of the Puritan tradition of New England, the historic center of the first settlers. Although he rejected the blind fanaticism of the official Puritan ideology (as in the short story “The Gentle Boy”), he idealized some traits of the Puritan ethic, in which he saw the only guarantee of moral fortitude, purity, and a harmonious existence (in the short story “The Great Carbuncle”). The intellectual and artistic quality of Hawthorne’s short stories and novels derives from his interest in the relations between the past and the present and from an interweaving of reality and fancy, a romantic passion, a detailed portrayal of mores, and a sharp satirical sense. These traits are exhibited in The Scarlet Letter (1850; Russian translation, 1856) and The House of the Seven Gables (1851; Russian translation, 1852). A writer with a tragic perception of the world and a romantic critic of bourgeois civilization, Hawthorne reflected the painful search for a positive moral ideal and for an autonomous human personality.

WORKS

The Complete Works, vols. 1–13. Boston-New York [1914].
In Russian translation:
Sobr. soch., vols. 1–2. Moscow, 1912–13.
Novelly. Moscow-Leningrad, 1965.

REFERENCES

Istoriia amerikanskoi literatury, vol. 1. Moscow-Leningrad, 1947.
Bruks, V. V. Pisatel’ i amerikanskaia zhizn’, vol. 1. Moscow, 1967.
Kauli, M. “Gotorn v uedinenii.” In his Dom so mnogimi oknami. Moscow, 1973.
Literaturnaia istoriia Soedinennykh Shtatov Ameriki, vol. 1. Moscow, 1977.
Hawthorne: The Critical Heritage. London [1970].
Browne, N. E. A Bibliography of Nathaniel Hawthorne. New York, 1968.

A. N. DOROSHEVICH