Nathaniel Hawthorne

Nathaniel Hawthorne was born in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1804. The town’s Puritan history became material for his fiction, but it was also part of his family past: an ancestor, magistrate John Hathorne, took part in the Salem witch proceedings. Hawthorne graduated from Bowdoin College in 1825 and spent years writing stories before stable work arrived.

He worked at the Boston Custom House and later became surveyor of the Port of Salem. When a change in federal administration cost him the Salem position in 1849, he returned to writing with urgency. The Scarlet Letter appeared in 1850; The House of the Seven Gables followed the next year. Both draw on the region’s history while asking how communities turn inherited judgment into private shame.

Hawthorne married Sophia Peabody in 1842; they raised three children and moved for his appointments, including his service as United States consul in Liverpool. His books found readers, but his writing did not reliably support the household: public posts and publishing work also mattered. Journals he kept from 1835 to 1853 preserve the places, observations and story seeds behind this quieter, less public side of his career.