1852: Hawthorne, Feathertop

Heritage

Hawthorne's "Puritan ancestors  . . . were among the first settlers of Massachusetts and included a judge in the Salem witchcraft trials of 1692" (Levine 652).

Hawthorne's father was a sea-captain who died in Surinam when Hawthorne was 4 years old.

Majoring in Friendships

When he was 17, Hawthorne enrolled at Bowdoin College in Maine, where be became friends with future U.S. President Franklin Pierce (who served from 1853-1857).

A Slow Start

For 12 years following his graduation in 1825, he lived at home in Salem with his mother and his sisters. During that time, he failed several times to find a publisher for various story collections. His novel, Fanshawe, published in 1828, "was so poorly reviewed that he attempted to suppress its distribution" (Levine 652).

In 1837, Hawthorne's first story collection, Twice-Told Tales, was published. Hawthorne did not know at the time that it was published because a college friend of his promised the publisher that if the book did not sell well, he would cover the losses.

Democratic Political Connections

In 1839, Hawthorne's connections got him a job as a "salt and coal measurer at the Boston Customs House" (Levine 653)

A Radical Experiment

In 1841, he spent seven months at Brook Farm, near West Roxbury, Massachusetts: a utopian experiment in communal living  in which all profits were divided evenly among participants.

The Concord Years

In 1842, Hawthorne moved into the "Old Manse" in Concord, which he rented from Ralph Waldo Emerson. In Concord, Hawthorne developed a friendship with Emerson and Thoreau.

Democratic Political Connections, II

In 1846, Hawthorne's Democratic Party connections got him a job as surveyor of the Custom House in Salem. He lost the job when a Whig, Zachary Taylor, became President in 1849. A year later, he started work on The Scarlet Letter.

Success

In 1850, Hawthorne's novel The Scarlet Letter was published. Some reviewers considered the dark novel "licentious" and "morbid," but on the whole, it was an international literary success.

The Melville Encounter

In 1850, Hawthorne moved to Lenox, Massachusetts. While he was there, he developed an intense friendship with Herman Melville, who lived nearby and was writing Moby-Dick at the time. Melville dedicated the novel to Hawthorne.

"Feathertop"

In 1851, Hawthorne moved to West Newton and then he bought and redecorated Bronson Alcott's home in Concord. "Feathertop," Hawthorne's last short story written for adults, was published in 1852.

Thank you, Mr. President

When Franklin Pierce became President in 1854, he named Hawthorne American consul at Liverpool in England. Hawthorne surrendered the job in 1857, when Pierce did not win the Democratic nomination to compete for a second term.

After a stay in Italy, where he wrote his novel The Marble Faun (1860), Hawthorne returned to Concord in 1860.

Hawthorne remained loyal to Pierce, who was unpopular in the northern states because of Pierce's support of pro-slavery forces in Kansas during his presidential term. After the start of the Civil War, Hawthorne published an article making fun of Lincoln and "a nation gone mad with war" (Levine 655).

While travelling with Pierce, Hawthorne died in his sleep at a hotel in New Hampshire and was buried in Concord in 1854.

Legacy

"Thought some recent commentators have reviled Hawthorne for his 1855 complaint to his publisher Ticknor about the 'd----d mob of scribbling women,' the fact is that . . . few writers of the mid-nineteenth century were more insightful about the damage patriarchal culture can do to women" (Levine 654).