Nathaniel Hawthorne

Hawthorne, Nathaniel

Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 1804–64, American novelist and short-story writer, b. Salem, Mass., one of the great masters of American fiction. His novels and tales are penetrating explorations of moral and spiritual conflicts.

Early Life and Works

Descended from a prominent Puritan family, Hawthorne was the son of a sea captain who died when Nathaniel was 4 years old. When he was 14 he and his mother moved to a lonely farm in Maine. After attending Bowdoin College (1821–25), he devoted himself to writing. His first novel, Fanshawe (1829), published anonymously, was unsuccessful. His short stories won notice and were collected in Twice-Told Tales (1837; second series, 1842). Unable to support himself by writing and editing, he took a job at the Boston customhouse.

Later, Hawthorne lived at the experimental community Brook Farm for about six months, but he did not share the optimism and idealism of the transcendentalist participants (see transcendentalism), and he did not feel himself suited to communal life. In 1842 he married Sophia Peabody, a friend and follower of Emerson, Thoreau, and Margaret Fuller, and they settled in Concord. There he wrote the tales and sketches in the collection Mosses from an Old Manse (1846).

Later Life and Mature Work

In order to earn a livelihood Hawthorne served as surveyor of the port at Salem (1846–49), where he began writing his masterpiece, The Scarlet Letter (1850). Set in 17th-century Puritan New England, the novel delves deeply into the human heart, presenting the problems of moral evil and guilt through allegory and symbolism. It is often considered the first American psychological novel. Hawthorne's next novel, The House of the Seven Gables (1851), takes place in the New England of his own period but nevertheless also deals with the effects of Puritanism.

For a time the Hawthornes lived at “Tanglewood,” near Lenox, Mass., where he wrote A Wonder Book (1852), based on Greek mythology, which became a juvenile classic, and Tanglewood Tales (1853), also for children. At this time he befriended his neighbor Herman Melville, who was one of the first to appreciate Hawthorne's genius. Returning to Concord, Hawthorne completed The Blithedale Romance (1852), a novel based on his Brook Farm experience.

A campaign biography of his college friend Franklin Pierce earned Hawthorne the post of consul at Liverpool (1853–57) after Pierce became President. Hawthorne's stay in England is reflected in the travel sketches of Our Old Home (1863), and a visit to Italy resulted in the novel The Marble Faun (1860). After returning to the United States, he worked on several novels that were never finished. He died during a trip to the White Mts. with Franklin Pierce.

Short Stories

Aside from his importance as a novelist, Hawthorne is justly celebrated as a short-story writer. He helped to establish the American short story as a significant art form with his haunting tales of human loneliness, frustration, hypocrisy, eccentricity, and frailty. Among his most brilliant stories are “The Minister's Black Veil,” “Roger Malvin's Burial,” “Young Goodman Brown,” “Rappaccini's Daughter,” “The Great Stone Face,” and “Ethan Brand.”

Bibliography

See the centenary edition of his complete works, ed. by W. Charvat et al. (16 vol., 1965–85); biographies by his son, Julian Hawthorne (2 vol., 1884, repr. 1968), A. Turner (1980), J. R. Mellow (1980), E. Miller (1991), and B. Wineapple (2003); studies by H. James (1879, repr. 1956), M. D. Bell (1971), N. Baym (1976), T. Stoehr (1978), T. Martin (1983), M. Colacurcio (1984), F. Crews (1989), and E. Miller (1991).

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The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

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

The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 3rd Edition (1970-1979). © 2010 The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.

Hawthorne, Nathaniel (b. Hathorne)

(1804–64) writer; born in Salem, Mass. A descendant of a judge in the Salem witch trials, he spent a solitary, bookish childhood with his widowed and reclusive mother. After graduating from Bowdoin College, he returned to Salem and prepared for a writing career with 12 years of solitary study and writing interrupted by summer tours through the Northeast. After privately publishing a novel, Fanshawe (1828), he began publishing stories in the Token and New England Magazine. These original allegories of New England Puritanism, including such classic stories as "The Minister's Black Veil," were collected in Twice-Told Tales (1837). A brief period of paid employment, including the compilation of popular children's works and a stint at the Boston Custom House (1839–41)—thanks to his friend, Senator Franklin Pierce—was followed by a half-year's residence at the transcendentalist community, Brook Farm. In 1842 he married Sophia Amelia Peabody, also a transcendentalist, and they moved to Concord, Mass., where he began a friendship with Henry David Thoreau. Financial pressures forced his return to Salem (1845–49) where he secured another political appointment, this time as surveyor of the port of Salem (1845–49). During these years he continued to publish Puritan tales ("Young Goodman Brown," "The Birthmark"); collections of his stories included Mosses from an Old Manse (1846) and The Snow Image (1851). His dismissal from the surveyorship initiated the brief period of his greatest novels: The Scarlet Letter (1850), The House of the Seven Gables (1851), and The Blithdale Romance (1852). He also wrote two children's classics: A Wonder-Book (1852) and Tanglewood Tales (1853). His campaign biography of Franklin Pierce (1852) was rewarded with the U.S. consulship at Liverpool (1853–58). He then went to live in Italy (1858–59) where he began The Marble Faun, which he published after returning to the U.S.A. in 1860. Back in Concord, he published his last major work, Our Old Home (1863), which drew on his experiences in England, but by then he was becoming ill and disillusioned.

The Cambridge Dictionary of American Biography, by John S. Bowman. Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995. Reproduced with permission.