Nathaniel Hawthorne was born on July 4, 1804, in Salem,
Massachusetts, the son and grandson of proud New England seafarers.
He lived in genteel poverty with his widowed mother and two young
sisters in a house filled with Puritan ideals and family pride in a
prosperous past. His boyhood was, in most respects, pleasant and
normal. In 1825 he was graduated from Bowdoin College, Brunswick,
Maine, and he returned to Salem determined to become a writer of
short stories. For the next twelve years he was plagued with
unhappiness and self-doubts as he struggled to master his craft. He
finally secured some small measure of success with the publication
of his Twice-Told Tales (1837). His marriage to Sophia Peabody in
1842 was a happy one. The Scarlet Letter (1850), which brought him
immediate recognition, was followed by The House of the Seven
Gables (1851). After serving four years as the American Consul in
Liverpool, England, he traveled in Italy; he returned home to
Massachusetts in 1860. Depressed, weary of writing, and failing in
health, he died on May 19, 1864, at Plymouth, New Hampshire.
Brenda Wineapple authored Sister Brother- Gertrude and Leo Stein
and Genet- A Biography of Janet Flanner and is currently at work on
a biography of Nathaniel Hawthorne. She is Washington Irving
Professor of Modern Literary and Historical Studies at Union
College and has appeared on C-Span's American Writers series.
"A large and generous production, pervaded with that vague hum,
that indefinable echo, of the whole multitudinous life of man,
which is the real sign of a great work of fiction."
—Henry James
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