Transcript Nathaniel Hawthorne 1804-1864 Family History His great-great-grandfather, William Hathorne, ordered the whipping of Anne Coleman and four others in the streets of Salem.  His great-grandfather,

Nathaniel Hawthorne
1804-1864
Family History
His great-great-grandfather, William
Hathorne, ordered the whipping of Anne
Coleman and four others in the streets of
Salem.
 His great-grandfather, John Hathorne, was
the magistrate presiding over the trial of
the accused witches of Salem (1692).
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Childhood
Born July 4, 1804 in Salem, MA
 Father died when Hawthorne was four
years old
 Sent to private school once his relatives
discovered his storytelling abilities
 Sent to Bowdoin College in Maine
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College in Maine
Classmates included Franklin Pierce and
Henry Longfellow
 Pierce- future President of the USA
 Longfellow- poet, educator, linguist
 Graduated in 1825
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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
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
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Concord
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.
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Governmental Offices
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Between 1846 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
Hawthorne wrote a biography for Presidential
candidate Pierce for his campaign. Pierce had
attended college with Hawthorne.
President Pierce then appointed Hawthorne to
serve as the US Consul to Liverpool, England.
Influences on Hawthorne
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
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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
Returned to Concord
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
The Puritans
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Puritanism is the religious reform movement of
the 16th and 17th centuries seeking to purify the
Church of England
Characterized by earnest, intense moral and
religious principles such as the necessary
covenant relationship with God, the emphasis on
preaching and the Holy Spirit’s dominance over
reason as the instrument of salvation
America: a Holy Commonwealth and a
covenanted community
The Pilgrims
Settlers of Plymouth, MA, the first
permanent colony in New England – 1620
 Members of the English Separatist
Church, which was a radical faction of
Puritanism
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The Salem Witch Trials
May – October 1692: Salem, MA
 Constitute a series of investigations and
persecutions that caused 19 “witches” to
be hanged and many others imprisoned
 Period of public hysteria generated by
false accusations and coerced
confessions
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