Transcript Nathaniel Hawthorne - Buchanan Community Schools

Nathaniel Hawthorne
1804-1864
Childhood
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Born July 4,1804, in Salem,
Massachusetts.
Parents were devout Puritans.
Mother gave birth alone
while father was out at
sea.
Father died when Hawthorne
was four years old.
Childhood
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Sent to private school
once his relatives
discovered his
storytelling abilities.
Had aspirations to be a
writer at an early age.
Sent to Bowdoin College
in Maine.
Family History
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His great-greatgrandfather, William
Hathorne, ordered the
whipping of Anne
Coleman and four
others in the streets
of Salem.
His great-grandfather,
John Hathorne, was
the magistrate (judge)
presiding over the trial
of the accused witches
of Salem (1692).
College in Maine
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Classmates included
Franklin Pierce and
Henry Longfellow
Pierce  future
President of the USA
Longfellow  poet,
educator, linguist
Graduated in 1825
Pierce
Longfellow
Reclusive Years in Salem
He first anonymously published short
stories and a novel, Fanshawe.
 Hawthorne later formally withdrew most of
this early work, discounting it as the
work of inexperienced youth.
 He burned most of his works from these
years.
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Back into Society
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Editor for The American
Magazine of Useful
and Entertaining
Knowledge in 1836
Appointed to the Boston
Custom House in 1839
Became engaged to
Sophia Peabody,
married in 1842
Concord
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After his marriage to Sophia,
moved to the Old Manse in
Concord.
Joined the writing circles of
Thoreau, Emerson, and
Louisa May Alcott.
The Transcendentalists
believed that human
existence transcended
the sensory realm, and
rejected formalism in
favor of individual
intuition and imagination.
Governmental Offices
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Between1846 and
1849, he served as
a surveyor of the
Salem Custom
House.
He was ousted from
that job in 1849,
when the incoming
political party, The
Whigs, fired him to
put in their own
political appointees.
Governmental Duties
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Hawthorne wrote a biography
for Presidential candidate
Pierce for his campaign.
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President Pierce then
appointed Hawthorne to
serve as the US Consul to
Liverpool, England.
Influences on Hawthorne’s Works
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His early childhood in Salem
and work in the Salem
Custom House.
His Puritan family background.
He believed in the existence of
the devil.
He believed in determinism, a
theory of predestination.
Works
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Fanshawe (1828)
Mosses from an Old Manse (1846)
The Scarlet Letter (1850)
The House of Seven Gables (1851)
The Snow-Image (1851)
The Blithedale Romance (1852)
Life of Franklin Pierce (1852)
The Marble Faun (1860)
Final Days
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Returned to the US from
Europe in 1860.
Became ill and underwent
a loss of literary
creativity.
Journeyed to the White
Mountains hoping to
restore his health.
Died in Plymouth, NH on
May 19, 1864.
Buried in the Sleepy
Hollow cemetery in
Concord.