About Fyodor Hawthorne

Nathaniel Hawthorne was born in Salem, Massachusetts in 1804, descended from Puritan settlers who played significant roles in early American history. His most infamous ancestor, John Hathorne, served as a judge during the 1692 Salem Witch Trials and showed no remorse for condemning accused witches to execution. This dark family legacy haunted Nathaniel throughout his life—he even added the 'w' to his surname, possibly attempting to distance himself from his ancestor's sins, though he spent his entire literary career exploring themes of inherited guilt, Puritan moral rigidity, and the weight of the past on the present. His father, a sea captain, died of yellow fever when Hawthorne was only four years old, leaving the family in relative poverty. His mother withdrew into near-total seclusion, and young Hawthorne grew up in an atmosphere of quiet isolation that would influence his introspective, psychological writing style. He attended Bowdoin College in Maine, where he met future U.S. President Franklin Pierce (who would later appoint him to political positions) and fellow writer Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. After graduating in 1825, Hawthorne returned to Salem and entered what he later called his "solitary years"—spending over a decade living with his mother, reading extensively, writing in isolation, and publishing stories in magazines under pseudonyms. His first novel, Fanshawe (1828), was a commercial and critical failure. Hawthorne was so embarrassed that he attempted to destroy all existing copies. For the next dozen years, he struggled financially while writing short stories later collected in Twice-Told Tales (1837). To support himself, he worked at the Boston Custom House, then briefly joined the transcendentalist utopian community Brook Farm in 1841 (an experience he found disappointing and later satirized in The Blithedale Romance). In 1842, he married Sophia Peabody, and the marriage seems to have been genuinely happy despite ongoing financial struggles. He worked at the Salem Custom House from 1846-1849, a tedious government job processing import duties that he found soul-crushing. When he lost this position due to political changes, he was devastated—but the forced unemployment gave him time to write his masterpiece. The Scarlet Letter was published in 1850 and became an immediate sensation. It was controversial—some reviewers praised its psychological depth and moral complexity, while others condemned it as immoral for sympathizing with an adulteress and questioning religious authority. The semi-fictional introduction "The Custom-House," where Hawthorne claims to have found historical documents about Hester Prynne, deliberately blurs fiction and reality. The novel sold well and established Hawthorne as a major American literary figure overnight. He followed with The House of the Seven Gables (1851), exploring inherited family guilt and curses in his native Salem, and The Blithedale Romance (1852), satirizing the transcendentalist communities he'd briefly experienced. His friend Franklin Pierce became President in 1853 and appointed Hawthorne U.S. Consul in Liverpool, England. Hawthorne spent 1853-1857 abroad, traveling through England and Italy (experiences informing his final novel, The Marble Faun, 1860). He returned to America in declining health and struggled to complete new work. He began several novels but left them all unfinished. He died in 1864 in Plymouth, New Hampshire, possibly from stomach cancer, at age 59. He left behind a literary legacy that helped establish American literature as worthy of serious critical attention and created some of the most psychologically penetrating fiction of the 19th century.