Nathaniel Hawthorn :: essays research papers

Nathaniel HawthorneNathaniel Hawthorne was born in capital of Oregon, Massachusetts. His father, in any case Nathaniel, was a sea captain and descendent of John Hawthorne, one of the judges in the Salem witchcraft trials of 1692. He died when the young Nathaniel was four year old. Hawthorne grew up in seclusion with his widowed mother Elizabeth - and for the rest of her life they relied on for each one other for emotional solace. Later he wrote to his friend Henry Wadsworth Longfellow "I pull in locked myself in a dungeon and I cant find the come upon to get out." Hawthorne was educated at the Bowdoin College in Maine (1821-24). In the school among his friends were Longfellow and Franklin Pierce, who became the fourteenth president of the U.S.Between the years 1825 and 1836 Hawthorne worked as a writer and indorser to periodicals. Among Hawthornes friends was John L. OSullivan, whose magazine the Democratic Review published two cardinal stories by him. According to a story, Hawthorne burned his first short-story collection, Seven Tales of My primal Land, after publishers rejected it. Hawthornes first novel, FANSHAWE, appeared anonymously at his own put down in 1828. The work was based on his college life. It did not receive frequently attention and the author burned the unsold copies. However, the book initiated a intimacy between Hawthorne and the publisher Samuel Goodrich. He edited in 1836 the American cartridge holder of Useful and Entertaining Knowledge in Boston, and compiled in 1837 PETER PARLEYS customary HISTORY for children. In was followed by a series of books for children - GRANDFATHERS CHAIR (1841), illustrious OLD PEOPLE (1841), LIBERTY TREE (1841), and BIOGRAPHICAL STORIES FOR CHILDREN (1842). The second, expanded strain of TWICE TOLD TALES (1837), was praised by Edgar Allan Poe in Grahams Magazine. In 1842 Hawthorne became friends with the Transcendentalists in Concord, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, who als o drew on the Puritan legacy. However, generally he did not have much confidence in ables and artists, and eventually he had to admit, that "the treasure of intellectual gold" did not provide food for his family. In 1842 Hawthorne married Peabody, an restless participant in the Transcendentalist movement, and settled with her in Concord. A growing family and climb debts compelled their return to Salem. Hawthorne was unable to earn a living as a writer and in 1846 he was appointed surveyor of the Port of Salem. He worked in that respect for three years until he was fired.