Nathaniel Hawthorne was born on July 4, 1804, in Salem,
Massachusetts, the son and grandson of proud New England seafarers.
He lived in genteel poverty with his widowed mother and two young
sisters in a house filled with Puritan ideals and family pride in a
prosperous past. His boyhood was, in most respects, pleasant and
normal. In 1825 he was graduated from Bowdoin College, Brunswick,
Maine, and he returned to Salem determined to become a writer of
short stories. For the next twelve years he was plagued with
unhappiness and self-doubts as he struggled to master his craft. He
finally secured some small measure of success with the publication
of his Twice-Told Tales (1837). His marriage to Sophia Peabody in
1842 was a happy one. The Scarlet Letter (1850), which brought him
immediate recognition, was followed by The House of the Seven
Gables (1851). After serving four years as the American Consul in
Liverpool, England, he traveled in Italy; he returned home to
Massachusetts in 1860. Depressed, weary of writing, and failing in
health, he died on May 19, 1864, at Plymouth, New Hampshire.
Brenda Wineapplewas formerly the Washington Irving Professor of
Modern Literary and Historical Studies at Union College and now
teaches in the MFA programs at Columbia University and The New
School. Her books include White Heat- The Friendship of Emily
Dickinson and Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Hawthorne- A Life (winner
of the Ambassador Award of the English-Speaking Union for Best
Biography of 2003), Sister Brother- Gertrude & Leo Stein, and
Genat- A Biography of Janet Flanner.
Regina Barreca, a professor of English and Feminist Theory at the
Unniversity of Connecticut, is the editor of the influential
journal LIT- Literature, Interpretation, Theory. Among her many
books are They Used to Call Me Snow White...But I Drifted, a widely
acclaimed study of women's humor, and Perfect Husbands (& Other
Fairy Tales). She is also the editor of the Penguin Book of Women's
Humor.
"[Nathaniel Hawthorne] recaptured, for his New England, the essence of Greek tragedy." --Malcolm Cowley
"[Nathaniel Hawthorne] recaptured, for his New England, the essence of Greek tragedy." --Malcolm Cowley
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