The Scarlet Letter | Nathaniel Hawthorne Biography

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s life seems characterized by continued efforts to make enough money to support himself and his family interspersed with creative bursts of writing. He was born in Salem, Massachusetts on July 4, 1804, the second of three children. His father, Captain Hathorne (the writer added the w to his name when he began his writing career), was absent at his birth and died at sea when Nathaniel was four years old.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

From the ages of nine to twelve Nathaniel was unable to be active or to go to school due to a foot injury. Since he had little interaction with children his own age, he developed a fondness for reading, especially the classics. In the summer of 1816 his mother moved the family to Maine to live on family property there. Here Nathaniel grew to love the freedom of the wilderness.

During the winters Nathaniel returned to Salem for schooling. From 1821 to 1823 he attended Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine where he met three men who later influenced his life. One was Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, the well-known poet. The second, Franklin Pierce, became the fourteenth president of the United States and later was able to help Hawthorne financially with a political appointment. The third, Horatio Bridge, helped Hawthorne publish his first collection of stories.

After graduation Hawthorne spent the next twelve years at his mother’s house reading voraciously and practicing his writing skills. During this time he had only a few short works published. In 1837 his college classmate Bridge helped him publish Twice-Told Tales, a collection of stories which brought him some notice as a writer, but not very much income.

When he became engaged to Sophia Peabody in 1839, Hawthorne, needing more income, took a position in the Custom House at Boston. He did not enjoy the job and was not able to write very much during this period. In 1841 he invested a thousand dollars in Brook Farm, an experimental community in Massachusetts where he thought he could support himself with labor and be free to write. Finding himself too exhausted to write, he left after a few months. Encouraged by increased income from magazine writing, Nathaniel and Sophia were married in Boston on July 9, 1842.

The newly married couple moved to Concord, Massachusetts. There, while living in the now-famous “Old Manse,” Hawthorne came to know many leading Transcendentalist thinkers such as Emerson, Thoreau, and Alcott. During this time he was able to write and publish, but was still not able to support his family, which by 1844 included a daughter. Poverty even forced the family to break up briefly.

In 1846 Hawthorne secured an appointment as Surveyor of the Custom House at Salem through the influence of his Bowdoin friend, Franklin Pierce. That same year a son was born, and Hawthorne was able to publish Mosses from an Old Manse. A change in administrations forced Hawthorne out of the post, freeing him to begin writing The Scarlet Letter. During this time he became friends with Herman Melville who was writing Moby Dick.

In his years of reading, (supposedly, Hawthorne read almost every title and document in the Salem Antheneum) Hawthorne researched the role in history of his ancestors, the Judges Hathorne of Salem, who were among the original settlers of the colony. Judge Hathorne, the younger, had pronounced a sentence of death on several persons found guilty of witchcraft in the legendary Salem Witchcraft Trials.

Hawthorne also learned, through his reading of the historical and court documents of Salem and Boston, that a woman found guilty of adultery actually was sentenced to wearing a red letter “A” as a brand of her sinfulness. This information was the seed of a novel wherein Hawthorne tries to imagine the times when such a verdict would be possible and the sufferings of the people caught in such a harsh judgment.

The Scarlet Letter, published in 1850, was well-received, but again Hawthorne did not benefit financially to any great extent. Over the next few years, as the family moved from place to place, Hawthorne published The House of the Seven Gables, The Blithedale Romance, A Wonder Book for Boys and Girls, Tanglewood Tales, and A Life of Pierce. The last, a campaign biography for his former classmate, earned him an appointment as United States Consul at Liverpool, England.

As Consul in England, Hawthorne kept extensive notebooks during the years 1853 to 1857, but was unable to write any fiction. The next two years were spent in Italy where he began The Marble Faun, his last novel. In 1859 the family returned to England where Hawthorne published The Marble Faun. In 1860 the Hawthornes returned to the United States.

Hawthorne experienced failing health and was unable to complete any works over the next four years. He died on May 19, 1864 while on a brief vacation with Franklin Pierce.