50 Facts About Nathaniel Hawthorne

Nathaniel Hawthorne was an American novelist and short story writer.

Nathaniel Hawthorne was born in 1804 in Salem, Massachusetts, from a family long associated with that town.

Nathaniel Hawthorne published his first work in 1828, the novel Fanshawe; he later tried to suppress it, feeling that it was not equal to the standard of his later work.

Nathaniel Hawthorne published several short stories in periodicals, which he collected in 1837 as Twice-Told Tales.

Nathaniel Hawthorne worked at the Boston Custom House and joined Brook Farm, a transcendentalist community, before marrying Peabody in 1842.

Much of Nathaniel Hawthorne's writing centers on New England, many works featuring moral metaphors with an anti-Puritan inspiration.

Nathaniel Hawthorne's published works include novels, short stories, and a biography of his college friend Franklin Pierce, written for his 1852 campaign for President of the United States, which Pierce won, becoming the 14th president.

Nathaniel Hawthorne Hathorne, as his name was originally spelled, was born on July 4,1804, in Salem, Massachusetts; his birthplace is preserved and open to the public.

Nathaniel Hawthorne settled in Dorchester, Massachusetts, before moving to Salem.

Nathaniel Hawthorne probably added the "w" to his surname in his early twenties, shortly after graduating from college, in an effort to dissociate himself from his notorious forebears.

Young Nathaniel Hawthorne was hit on the leg while playing "bat and ball" on November 10,1813, and he became lame and bedridden for a year, though several physicians could find nothing wrong with him.

Nathaniel Hawthorne distributed seven issues of The Spectator to his family in August and September 1820 for fun.

Nathaniel Hawthorne met future president Franklin Pierce on the way to Bowdoin, at the stage stop in Portland, and the two became fast friends.

Nathaniel Hawthorne graduated with the class of 1825, and later described his college experience to Richard Henry Stoddard:.

Nathaniel Hawthorne's first published work, Fanshawe: A Tale, based on his experiences at Bowdoin College, appeared anonymously in October 1828, printed at the author's own expense of $100.

Nathaniel Hawthorne published several minor pieces in the Salem Gazette.

In 1836, Nathaniel Hawthorne served as the editor of the American Magazine of Useful and Entertaining Knowledge.

Nathaniel Hawthorne was offered an appointment as weigher and gauger at the Boston Custom House at a salary of $1,500 a year, which he accepted on January 17,1839.

Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote in the comparative obscurity of what he called his "owl's nest" in the family home.

Nathaniel Hawthorne had public flirtations with Mary Silsbee and Elizabeth Peabody, then he began pursuing Peabody's sister, the illustrator and transcendentalist Sophia Peabody.

Nathaniel Hawthorne joined the transcendentalist Utopian community at Brook Farm in 1841, not because he agreed with the experiment but because it helped him save money to marry Sophia.

Nathaniel Hawthorne paid a $1,000 deposit and was put in charge of shoveling the hill of manure referred to as "the Gold Mine".

Nathaniel Hawthorne left later that year, though his Brook Farm adventure became an inspiration for his novel The Blithedale Romance.

Nathaniel Hawthorne married Sophia Peabody on July 9,1842, at a ceremony in the Peabody parlor on West Street in Boston.

At the Old Manse, Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote most of the tales collected in Mosses from an Old Manse.

Nathaniel Hawthorne was mostly bedridden until her sister introduced her to Hawthorne, after which her headaches seem to have abated.

Nathaniel Hawthorne had difficulty writing during this period, as he admitted to Longfellow:.

Nathaniel Hawthorne was a Democrat and lost this job due to the change of administration in Washington after the presidential election of 1848.

Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote a letter of protest to the Boston Daily Advertiser which was attacked by the Whigs and supported by the Democrats, making Hawthorne's dismissal a much-talked about event in New England.

Nathaniel Hawthorne was appointed the corresponding secretary of the Salem Lyceum in 1848.

Nathaniel Hawthorne became friends with Herman Melville beginning on August 5,1850, when the authors met at a picnic hosted by a mutual friend.

Melville wrote that these stories revealed a dark side to Nathaniel Hawthorne, "shrouded in blackness, ten times black".

Nathaniel Hawthorne published A Wonder-Book for Girls and Boys in 1851, a collection of short stories retelling myths which he had been thinking about writing since 1846.

Nevertheless, poet Ellery Channing reported that Nathaniel Hawthorne "has suffered much living in this place".

The family enjoyed the scenery of the Berkshires, although Nathaniel Hawthorne did not enjoy the winters in their small house.

That year, Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote The Life of Franklin Pierce, the campaign biography of his friend, which depicted him as "a man of peaceful pursuits".

Nathaniel Hawthorne left out Pierce's drinking habits, despite rumors of his alcoholism, and emphasized Pierce's belief that slavery could not "be remedied by human contrivances" but would, over time, "vanish like a dream".

Nathaniel Hawthorne's appointment ended in 1857 at the close of the Pierce administration.

Nathaniel Hawthorne admitted that he had aged considerably, referring to himself as "wrinkled with time and trouble".

At the outset of the American Civil War, Hawthorne traveled with William D Ticknor to Washington, DC, where he met Abraham Lincoln and other notable figures.

Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote about his experiences in the essay "Chiefly About War Matters" in 1862.

Nathaniel Hawthorne was suffering from pain in his stomach and insisted on a recuperative trip with his friend Franklin Pierce, though his neighbor Bronson Alcott was concerned that Nathaniel Hawthorne was too ill.

Mrs Nathaniel Hawthorne was too saddened by the news to handle the funeral arrangements herself.

Longfellow wrote a tribute poem to Nathaniel Hawthorne published in 1866 called "The Bells of Lynn".

Nathaniel Hawthorne was buried on what is known as "Authors' Ridge" in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, Concord, Massachusetts.

Nathaniel Hawthorne's works belong to romanticism or, more specifically, dark romanticism, cautionary tales that suggest that guilt, sin, and evil are the most inherent natural qualities of humanity.

Nathaniel Hawthorne was predominantly a short story writer in his early career.

Nathaniel Hawthorne defined a romance as being radically different from a novel by not being concerned with the possible or probable course of ordinary experience.

In Hester's first appearance, Nathaniel Hawthorne likens her, "infant at her bosom", to Mary, Mother of Jesus, "the image of Divine Maternity".

In 2008, the Library of America selected Nathaniel Hawthorne's "A show of wax-figures" for inclusion in its two-century retrospective of American True Crime.