Nathaniel Hawthorne’s literature is among the earliest American works with themes that have stood the test of time. Even today, we’re still fascinated with discussions about religious hypocrisy and the ramifications of guilt and sin — and especially gossip. While Hawthorne didn’t exactly come up with these concepts, The Scarlet Letter and his other works still provide us with a unique perspective from a unique era. Influenced by Puritanical New England, while combining historical romance with symbolism, complex psychological topics, and a touch of surrealism, Nathaniel Hawthorne is perhaps one of the more unsung — but no less interesting — figures in American literature.

Here are 40 incredible facts about the life and death of Nathaniel Hawthorne.

Nathaniel Hawthorne: Early Life & Education

1. When and Where was Nathaniel Hawthorne born?

Nathaniel Hawthorne was born at 27 Union Street in Salem, Massachusetts, on July 4, 1804 — just a one-minute walk from the House of the Seven Gables.

2. Nathaniel Hawthorne changed his name because of his problematic family line

William Hathorne, the author’s great-great-great-grandfather, held several governmental roles, including magistrate and judge, and was known for his cruel sentencing.  However, it was probably the author’s great-great-grandfather, John Hathorne, who motivated him to add a ‘W’ to his name as he was one of the judges who presided over the Salem witch trials. Hawthorne wrote of him: “so conspicuous in the martyrdom of the witches, that their blood may fairly be said to have left a stain upon him.”

3. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s family resided with relatives after his father died

Nathaniel Hathorne, the writer’s father, was a sea captain who died of yellow fever in 1808. Following his death, his widow traveled to Salem with little Nathaniel and her other two daughters to live with relatives named the Mannings, where they continued to live for ten years.

4. Nathaniel Hawthorne was bedridden for a year, but doctors said nothing was wrong with him

In 1813, while playing “bat and ball,” young Nathaniel Hawthorne was hit in the leg, leading to an injury that left him bedridden for a year. Interestingly, multiple physicians could discover nothing wrong with him and some historians believe it might’ve been a psychological symptom. Nevertheless, Nathaniel Hawthorne limited his activities as a child and became an avid reader. Also, did Nathaniel Hawthorne suffer like the very first baseball injury?

5. Nathaniel Hawthorne created a newspaper for his family

In August and September 1820, Nathaniel Hawthorne gave his family no less than 7 issues of The Spectator, a newspaper created by him. The handwritten newspaper had essays, poems, and news — all of which featured the young author’s adolescent charm.

6. Nathaniel Hawthorne didn’t want to go to college

Despite Hawthorne’s protests, his uncle Robert Manning insisted that Hawthorne should attend college. Nathaniel Hawthorne was sent to Bowdoin College in 1821 with the financial help of his uncle, where he read widely and received an excellent education in English composition and the classics, especially Latin. His refusal to speak in public hindered him from achieving an extraordinary academic record, but he was otherwise in good standing.

7. Nathaniel Hawthorne befriended the 14th president of the U.S in college

On his journey to Bowdoin, Nathaniel Hawthorne met future president Franklin Pierce at a stage stop in Portland, and the two became instant close friends. In college, he also met future congressman Jonathan Cilley, future navy reformer Horatio Bridge, and future poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, who would become his lifetime friend and later write the poem “The Bells of Lynn” in his honor.

Life & Times of Nathaniel Hawthorne

8. Nathaniel Hawthorne left an editor job to work as a weigher and gauger

Nathaniel Hawthorne was the editor of the American Magazine of Useful and Entertaining Knowledge from 1836 to 1837. In 1839, he was offered a job as a weigher and gauger at the Boston Custom House for $1,500 a year, which he accepted.

9. Nathaniel Hawthorne flirted with his future wife’s sister

Nathaniel Hawthorne had public affairs with Mary Silsbee and Elizabeth Peabody before shifting his affection to Peabody’s sister, the illustrator, Sophia Peabody. In 1842, Hawthorne married Sophia Peabody, and the couple had a long and happy marriage that lasted up to his death. He referred to her as his “Dove” and wrote that she “is, in the strictest sense, my sole companion; and I need no other—there is no vacancy in my mind, any more than in my heart … Thank God that I suffice for her boundless heart!”

10. Nathaniel Hawthorne burned love letters from his wife

Some suggested that Nathaniel Hawthorne was driven by the fact that the couple had consummated their relationship prior to marriage, and that there was evidence of this in the letters. To safeguard his wife’s reputation, Hawthorne could possibly have burned them. He wrote in his diary: “The world has no more such, and now they are all dust and ashes. What a trustful guardian of secret matters fire is! What should we do without Fire and Death?”

11. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s wife Sophia was his biggest fan

Sophia Hawthorne had a deep respect and great admiration for her husband’s work. Throughout their lives, she continuously motivated Nathaniel Hawthorne to write and urged him to send his work for publication. In one of her journals, she wrote: “I am always so dazzled and bewildered with the richness, the depth, the jewels of beauty in his productions that I am always looking forward to a second reading where I can ponder and muse and fully take in the miraculous wealth of thoughts.”

12. How many children did Nathaniel Hawthorne have?

Nathaniel and Sophia Hawthorne had three children together. Their first child, Una, was born in 1844 and her name was a reference to The Faerie Queene, much to the displeasure of family members. Julian, their son, was born in 1846. In 1851, their daughter Rose was born, and Nathaniel Hawthorne nicknamed her his “autumnal flower.” Here is a picture of Una and Julian Hawthorne, circa 1850.

13. Rose Hawthorne was proposed for sainthood

Following the death of her 5-year-old child and her husband, Rose Hawthorne moved into a tenement in an impoverished New York City neighborhood and began nursing terminally ill cancer patients. She then joined a religious order and became a nun. To continue her service with indigent cancer patients, she co-founded the Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne in 1900. She was nominated for sainthood in 2003.

14. Nathaniel Hawthorne joined a Utopian society for a year

In 1841, Nathaniel Hawthorne joined the Brook Farm transcendentalist Utopian society. The author expected farm life would free up more time for him to write but hated its tough labor including shoveling a hill of manure called the “gold mine”. The blisters on Hawthorne’s hands made writing difficult, and he pondered how anybody could “expect pretty stories from a man who feeds pigs.” He left later that year, but his experience at Brook Farm inspired his novel The Blithedale Romance.

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15. Nathaniel Hawthorne never committed to a religion

Despite being extremely devout to infusing religious ideas into his writings, Nathaniel Hawthorne never joined any organized religion. In fact, his work continuously sheds light on the problem of establishing a community on moral principles and religious faith and how individuals of the society do not arrive at their own moral conclusions.

16. Nathaniel Hawthorne once helped search for a dead body

Martha Hunt, a local teen, had drowned in the river, and Hawthorne’s boat was needed to locate her body. The body was recovered by Nathaniel Hawthorne, who described it as “a spectacle of such perfect horror… She was the very image of death-agony.” Later, in his novel The Blithedale Romance, he used the experience as the basis for a scene.

17. Nathaniel Hawthorne lost a job after the change of administration following the elections

Nathaniel Hawthorne was elected Surveyor for the District of Salem and Beverly, as well as Inspector of the Revenue for the Port of Salem in Massachusetts, in April 1846. However, because Hawthorne was a Democrat, he lost his job after the presidential election of 1848, when the administration in Washington changed. He submitted a protest letter to the Boston Daily Advertiser, which was attacked by the Whigs and defended by the Democrats, making Hawthorne’s dismissal a hot topic in New England.

18. Nathaniel Hawthorne was productive while living in Berkshire… but didn’t exactly enjoy it

While residing in Berkshires, Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote The House of the Seven Gables (1851), The Blithedale Romance (1852), and published A Wonder-Book for Girls and Boys in 1851. While his family enjoyed the scenery of the Berkshires, Hawthorne didn’t enjoy the winters in their small house and suffered much living in this place. They left in 1851 and Hawthorne noted, “I am sick to death of Berkshire … I have felt languid and dispirited, during almost my whole residence.”

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19. Nathaniel Hawthorne was hired as the United States consul in Liverpool

When his old college buddy, Franklin Pierce was elected United States president, Nathaniel Hawthorne became the U.S consul in Liverpool, a role described by Hawthorne’s wife as “second in dignity to the Embassy in London”

20. After living in Liverpool, the Hawthornes took a Europe tour

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s position in Liverpool ended in 1857 at the close of the Pierce administration. The Hawthorne family decided to tour France and Italy until 1860. During his time in Italy, the previously clean-shaven Hawthorne changed his look and grew a bushy mustache.

 

What Books is Nathaniel Hawthorne Famous For?

21. Nathaniel Hawthorne published his first work anonymously

Nathaniel Hawthorne had been working on a novel while he was a student at Bowdoin College. Fanshawe, his debut novel, may or may not have been that work, as it was published anonymously. The book was based on Hawthorne’s experiences as a Bowdoin College student in the early 1820s, and it cost him $100 to print. The manuscript was so rare, and Hawthorne was so secretive about his early effort at a novel, that after his death, his wife, Sophia, insisted that her husband had never written a novel with that title.

22. When did Nathaniel Hawthorne write The Scarlet Letter?

The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne was published in the spring of 1850 by the folks at Ticknor, Reed & Fields. The book was an instant best seller, and was actually one of the very first books in America that was mass-produced.

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23. The Scarlet Letter was a bestseller but didn’t earn Nathaniel Hawthorne much money

The Scarlet Letter established Nathaniel Hawthorne as a well-known author ensuring that his following work, The House of Seven Gables would find an audience. It was one of America’s earliest mass-market books, selling 2,500 copies in ten days. Despite its popularity in the United States and abroad, revenues were not very high—international versions paid less than a penny a copy. Over the next 14 years of his life, Hawthorne only made $1500 from the book.

24. The Scarlet Letter’s popularity was partly political

Because of the publicity surrounding Nathaniel Hawthorne’s firing a year before The Scarlet Letter was published, readers were initially more interested in the novel’s introduction, “The Custom-House,” in which Hawthorne’s stinging pen blasted his political opponents.

25. Hawthorne refused to change the novel’s introduction

Despite widespread outrage from Salem residents who didn’t like how Nathaniel Hawthorne described them in his introduction “The Custom-House,” Hawthorne refused to edit it when the book was reprinted. He ruled out any personal or political motivations, saying: “The only remarkable features of the sketch are its frank and genuine good-humor.”

26. The Scarlet Letter concept did actually exist in Puritan culture

Nathaniel Hawthorne was almost certainly aware that The Scarlet Letter had a historical precedent. People found in adultery were punished and made to wear two capital letters, A or D, cut out of cloth and sewed on their topmost Garments on their arm or back, according to a 1658 law in Plymouth. They would be publicly lashed again if they removed the letters. In Salem, a similar law was enacted.

27. Nathaniel Hawthorne had a thing for the word “Ignominy”

Among the 87,000 words that The Scarlet Letter consists of, the word “ignominy” was used 16 times, “ignominiously” was used once, and “ignominious” was used seven times. Ignominious means shame, disgrace, and dishonor, which were all less frequently used in the novel.

28. When did Nathaniel Hawthorne write The House of the Seven Gables?

The House of the Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne was published in April 1851 by Ticknor and Fields. The novel required a 4th printing by September and sold about 6,700 copies its first year — more than The Scarlet Letter.

29. Nathaniel Hawthorne felt slow writing The House of the Seven Gables

Nathaniel Hawthorne began writing it in August 1850 and by October, had only chosen the title. A month later, Hawthorne began noticing his slow progress and wrote: “I write diligently, but not so rapidly as I hoped… I find the book requires more care and thought than the Scarlet Letter.” He was aiming to get the book finished by November but didn’t want to rush himself to meet the deadline. As he wrote, “I must not pull up my cabbage by the roots, by way of hastening its growth.”

30. Nathanial Hawthorne wrote a comedy about the Civil War

Nathaniel Hawthorne traveled to Washington, D.C. at the start of the American Civil War, when he met Abraham Lincoln and other significant people. In 1862, he published the essay “Chiefly About War Matters,” which was a biting satire of the war that didn’t cater to any side. Instead, it essentially insulted all the participants.

31. Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote the campaign biography for Franklin Pierce

Shortly before Pierce’s election to the presidency in 1852, Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote The Life of Franklin Pierce as a campaign biography. He was described by Hawthorne as “a man of peaceful pursuits.” Despite allegations of his drunkenness, Hawthorne left out Pierce’s drinking habits and stressed Pierce’s opinion that slavery could not “be remedied by human contrivances” but would “vanish like a dream” over time.

32. When did Nathaniel Hawthorne write The Marble Faun?

The Marble Faun by Nathaniel Hawthorne was published in 1860. Ralph Waldo Emerson said it was “mush” lol. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow said that the book had “the old, dull pain in it that runs through all of Hawthorne’s writings” lmao.

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33. The Marble Faun was adapted as an opera

When Nathaniel Hawthorne visited the Faun of Praxiteles in the Palazzo Nuovo of the Capitoline Museum in Rome in early 1858, he was inspired to write The Marble Faun. Two years later, the novel was released, marking Hawthorne’s first publication in seven years. The novel was made into a three-part Italian miniseries in 1977, and in 1996, it was adapted into an opera.

Death & Legacy of Nathaniel Hawthorne

34. When did Nathaniel Hawthorne die?

Nathaniel Hawthorne died in his sleep on May 19, 1864 at age 59 in Plymouth, New Hampshire, while on a tour of the White Mountains. Nathaniel Hawthorne had stomach pains and persisted in going on a rehabilitative journey with his buddy Franklin Pierce, despite his neighbor’s concerns that he was too ill. Pierce dispatched a message to Elizabeth Peabody, requesting that she personally inform Mrs. Hawthorne. Mrs. Hawthorne was devastated by the news and was unable to handle the funeral arrangements herself.

35. Julian Hawthorne was in a coffin the day his father died

Julian Hawthorne was a freshman at Harvard College when he learned of his father’s death the day after Nathaniel’s passing. On the day Nathaniel died, Julian was blindfolded and placed in a coffin to be admitted into the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity.

36. Nathaniel Hawthorne and Sophia were reunited after more than 100 years

Sophia Hawthorne died in London seven years after burying her husband in Concord’s Sleepy Hollow Cemetery. When she died in 1877, she was buried with her daughter Una across the ocean from her husband. The bodies of Hawthorne’s wife and daughter were found and laid to rest next to him in London’s Kensal Green Cemetery in 2006.

37. How many film versions of The Scarlett Letter are there?

The Scarlet Letter has been adapted to film more than 8 times. The most popular of which was the 1995 version starring Demi Moore, which significantly deviates from the novel. Besides the direct adaptations, a lot of movies were inspired by the novel such as the 2010 movie Easy A, starring Emma Stone, which directly references it on multiple occasions.

38. Nathaniel Hawthorne created a proto-feminist when he wrote The Scarlet Letter

Feminist viewpoints and approaches have been brought to Nathaniel Hawthorne’s depictions of women, particularly with Hester Prynne. Historicists consider Hester to be a proto-feminist and the embodiment of the self-reliance and responsibility that led to women’s suffrage as she was a dignified character who bared her status as an outcast with dignity and strength and rose to become a successful seamstress, raising her daughter despite the authorities’ attempts to remove the child. As a result, she’s a nuanced figure that exemplifies what occurs when a woman defies traditional norms.

39. Can I visit the Nathaniel Hawthorne birthplace?

Yes! Many years after Nathaniel Hawthorne’s death, The House of the Seven Gables Settlement Association bought the house and relocated it to the museum campus in 1958. His birthplace has been preserved at 115 Derby Street in Salem, Massachusetts since then and is open to the public.

40. What is the best Nathaniel Hawthorne biography?

Hawthorne: A Life by the great literary critic Brenda Wineapple has been called “clearly the best biography of Hawthorne … for our time” by fellow literary critic Sacvan Bercovitch. Published in 2004, Brenda Wineapple explores the very rich life of Nathaniel Hawthorne from his Salem roots a mile away from the house his writing made famous to his close friendships with Franklin Pierce and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow at Bowdoin College, as well as his life’s work.

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Final Thoughts about Nathaniel Hawthorne

Nathaniel Hawthorne is one of the most well-known individuals in American literature, thanks to his political activity and prolific writing career. Much of his writing was dark romantic, a branch of Romanticism that delved into society’s ugly underbelly with cautionary stories that claim shame, sin, and evil is the most basic human attributes. Today, Hawthorne is regarded as one of the key characters in the transformation of America’s literary legacy. The psychological and moral ideas that his art contains are still relevant. Hawthorne rejected what he perceived as the Transcendentalists’ blatant optimism in human nature’s potentialities. Instead, he examined life a bit more closely and perhaps more honestly, discovering misery and conflict as well as the redeeming power of love.

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Interested in learning more interesting facts about literary superstars? Check out our pages on Jane Austen, Oscar Wilde, Virginia Woolf, Philip K. Dick, and F. Scott Fitzgerald, as well as his good buddy Ernest Hemingway.

Cover Image Credit: via Wikimedia Commons

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