The Oxford Companion to English Literature | Hawthorne, Nathaniel
Hawthorne, Nathaniel
(
1804
–
64
), American novelist and short story writer, born at Salem, Massachusetts. He was a descendant of Major William Hathorne (
1607
–
81
), one of the Puritan settlers in America, the ‘grave, bearded, sable-cloaked and steeple-crowned progenitor’ whose portrait is drawn in the introductory chapter of
The Scarlet Letter
: he was remembered for his persecution of the Quakers, as his son
John
Hathorne
, also a magistrate, was remembered for his persecution of the so-called Witches of Salem.
Hawthorne
(who adopted this spelling of the family name) spent a solitary childhood with his mother, a widowed recluse, during which he read widely; he was educated at Bowdoin College, Brunswick (with
Longfellow
), then returned to Salem, where he began to write stories and sketches and published a novel, Fanshawe (
1828
), at his own expense. His stories began to appear in...
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