Nathaniel Hawthorne

Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864) was an American novelist and short-story writer whose fiction explores sin, guilt, secrecy, and Puritan history. His best-known novels are The Scarlet Letter and The House of the Seven Gables.

The Scarlet Letter: Nathaniel Hawthorne’s 1850 novel follows Hester Prynne, condemned to wear a scarlet letter in Puritan Boston. Its public punishment and private guilt make it the clearest entry to Hawthorne’s central concerns.
Young Goodman Brown: Nathaniel Hawthorne’s 1835 short story follows a Puritan man who encounters apparent evil in the forest. The story compresses Hawthorne’s doubts about moral certainty into a single night’s journey.
Salem witch trials: The 1692–1693 prosecutions in colonial Massachusetts led to the execution of twenty people for witchcraft. Hawthorne’s Salem ancestry connected him to the trials and their legacy of accusation and shame.
Herman Melville: An American novelist and short-story writer best known for Moby-Dick. Melville admired Hawthorne’s writing, and their friendship prompted his essay “Hawthorne and His Mosses.”
American Renaissance: A period of major literary activity in the United States, especially during the mid-nineteenth century. Hawthorne’s major works belong to the era that established a distinctive American literary canon.
The House of the Seven Gables: Nathaniel Hawthorne’s 1851 novel traces a family’s fortunes under the weight of an ancestral crime. The novel turns Hawthorne’s interest in inherited guilt into a multigenerational family story.
The Birth-Mark: Nathaniel Hawthorne’s 1843 story follows a scientist obsessed with removing a small mark from his wife’s face. Aylmer’s experiment makes the desire to perfect another person a source of horror.
John Hathorne: A Massachusetts magistrate who presided over examinations during the Salem witch trials. Hawthorne’s ancestor’s role in the trials gave family history a troubling place in his imagination.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: An American poet and professor whose works include “Paul Revere’s Ride” and Evangeline. Longfellow was Hawthorne’s classmate at Bowdoin College and an early literary associate.
American literature: Literature written in the United States and its predecessor colonies. His novels and stories became enduring works within the national literary tradition.

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