Biographies:
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Birth Date/Death Date: 1804-1864
Born In: Salem, Mass.
Nathaniel Hawthorne or Nathaniel B. Hawthorne was a descendent of a judge in the Salem witch trials, this fact brought him much grief throughout his life.
Hawthorne spent most of his solitary childhood by his widowed mother's side. Once Hawthorne graduated from Bowdoin College, he went back to Salem, and started to prepare for his writing career. After 12 years of solitary study and writing influenced by his summer tours through the Northeast, Hawthorne privately published a novel, Fawshawe (1828). he soon began publishing stories in magazines like the Token and New England Magazine. Most of these magazine publications are classics such as "The Minster's Black Veil," which were collected and made into a book entitled Twice-Told Stories (1837).
Hawthorne took a brief period of employment, but still contained writing, he wrote many popular children's works. And he soon acquired a job at the Boston Custom House from the years 1839 to 1841. His friend, Senator Franklin Pierce helped him by giving him a half-year's residence at a quaint community, Brook Farm. Soon in 1842 he married Sophia Amelia Peabody, then they moved to Concord, Mass., where Hawthorne befriended Henry David Thoreau.
Finally, financial matters forced Hawthorne to return to Salem, Mass from 1845 to 1849. While in Salem Hawthorne was able to gain a job as a surveyor in the port of Salem from 1845 to 1849. Hawthorne continued to work on collections of short stories during these years. Then afterward he continued to write novels such as The Scarlet Letter (1850), and others like The House of he Seven Gables (1851). Hawthorne's campaign biography of Franklin Pierce (1852) won the U.S. consulship in Liverpool, England from 1853 to 1858. He then moved to Italy, where he began to write The Marble Faun, which he then published once he returned to the U.S. in 1860. Then, in Concord Hawthorne published his last major work Our Old Home (1863). But, by then he was becoming ill and disillusioned.