(...and his personal life)

• Born: July 4, 1804 in Salem, Massachusetts

• That’s 112 years after the Salem Witch Trials

• One of his progenitors (VOCAB WORD!) was John Hathorne, a judge in the Salem Witch Trials of 1692.

• Was a sea captain.• Lost at sea and died in

1808 in Dutch Guiana when Nathaniel was only four.

• Became overly protective and pushed Nathaniel to a state of isolation.

• Was an antisocial widow who was forced to raise a son, Nathaniel, and two daughters, Elizabeth and Maria Louisa

• Nathaniel’s love for literature began after he was injured playing ball and couldn’t do anything else.

• He was a very shy person, even at parties.

• He liked to hunt and fish, and not stay in school.

• Nathaniel was stricken with guilt at his family’s participation in the Salem witch trials

• He changed his family name because of this embarrassment

• His guilt is apparent in some of his writings; his ancestors are often characters in his stories

• A Custom House (for those of you who do not know) is an office at a port where customs are collected and where ships are given permission to enter or leave.

• For financial reasons he moved into and worked in a Boston Custom House in 1839

• This was his job for 3 years.

• He managed to make just enough money to get married and buy a home.

• Nathaniel married Sophia Peabody in 1842. She was a friend of some writers he knew.

• When he got married, he was 38, and she was 32

• They bought the home of Louisa May Alcott’s (author of Little Women) father

• On June 22, 1846, Nathaniel’s son Julian was born

• Hawthorne’s writing received immediate success

• One of his novels was pirated by London publishers, hurting him financially

• Because of his financial relief, he had a daughter

• His novels focused on past and present New England life

• Most of his novels were about Puritans

• Because of his success, he befriended Herman Mellville, another writer, a neighbor, and, eventually, a promoter of Hawthorne’s work

• Nathaniel Hawthorne died in Plymouth, New Hampshire on May 19, 1864 on a trip to the White Mountains with his friend Franklin Pierce.

• The Ex-President had checked on his friend many times during the night, only to find that Hawthorne had stopped breathing.