Nathaniel Hawthorne

Nathaniel Hawthorne (born Hathorne; July 4, 1804 – May 19, 1864) was a prominent American novelist and short story writer. His literary contributions frequently explored themes of history, morality, and religion.

Born in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1804, Hawthorne hailed from a family deeply rooted in the town's history. He matriculated at Bowdoin College in 1821, achieving election to Phi Beta Kappa in 1824 and graduating in 1825. His inaugural publication, the novel Fanshawe, appeared in 1828; however, he subsequently attempted to withdraw it from circulation, deeming it inferior to his later literary achievements. He contributed numerous short stories to various periodicals, which he later compiled into the collection Twice-Told Tales in 1837. The subsequent year marked his engagement to Sophia Peabody. Prior to their marriage in 1842, Hawthorne held a position at the Boston Custom House and participated in Brook Farm, a transcendentalist community. The couple initially resided at The Old Manse in Concord, Massachusetts, before relocating to Salem, then the Berkshires, and finally to The Wayside, also in Concord. The Scarlet Letter, a seminal work, was released in 1850, preceding a series of other notable novels. A political appointment as consul facilitated Hawthorne's relocation with his family to Europe, after which they returned to Concord in 1860. Hawthorne passed away on May 19, 1864.

A significant portion of Hawthorne's literary output is set in New England, frequently employing moral metaphors imbued with an anti-Puritan sensibility. His fictional narratives are categorized within the Romantic movement, specifically as dark romanticism. Recurring themes in his work often explore the intrinsic evil and sinfulness of humanity, characterized by profound psychological complexity and overt moral messages. His published oeuvre encompasses novels, short stories, and a biographical account of his college acquaintance, Franklin Pierce, penned for Pierce's 1852 presidential campaign, which he successfully won, becoming the 14th President of the United States.

Biography

Early life

Nathaniel Hathorne, the original spelling of his surname, was born on July 4, 1804, in Salem, Massachusetts; his birth home is now a preserved public site. His great-great-great-grandfather, William Hathorne, a Puritan, was the family's first emigrant from England. William initially settled in Dorchester, Massachusetts, before relocating to Salem, where he rose to prominence within the Massachusetts Bay Colony. He occupied numerous political roles, including magistrate and judge, gaining notoriety for his severe judicial pronouncements. William's son, John Hathorne, who was Nathaniel's great-great-grandfather, served as one of the judges during the infamous Salem witch trials. Nathaniel likely appended the "w" to his surname in his early twenties, soon after completing college, to distance himself from his notorious ancestors. His father, Nathaniel Hathorne Sr., a sea captain and member of the East India Marine Society, succumbed to yellow fever in Dutch Suriname in 1808. Following his father's death, young Nathaniel, his elder sister Elizabeth, and younger sister Louisa moved with their widowed mother to reside with their Manning relatives in Salem for a decade. On November 10, 1813, while playing "bat and ball," young Hawthorne sustained a leg injury that rendered him lame and confined to bed for a year, despite multiple physicians finding no discernible medical issue.

During the summer of 1816, the family temporarily resided as boarders with farmers before relocating to a house specifically constructed for them by Hawthorne's uncles, Richard and Robert Manning, in Raymond, Maine, near Sebago Lake. Reflecting on this period years later, Hawthorne recalled his time in Maine with affection: "Those were delightful days, for that part of the country was wild then, with only scattered clearings, and nine tenths of it primeval woods." In 1819, he returned to Salem for schooling, soon expressing feelings of homesickness and separation from his mother and sisters. For amusement, he circulated seven issues of The Spectator among his family in August and September 1820. This handwritten, homemade newspaper featured essays, poems, and news, showcasing the young author's youthful wit.

Despite Hawthorne's objections, his uncle, Robert Manning, insisted on his college attendance. Supported financially by his uncle, Hawthorne enrolled at Bowdoin College in 1821, a decision influenced by both local family ties and the institution's comparatively affordable tuition. En route to Bowdoin, at a stage stop in Portland, Hawthorne encountered Franklin Pierce, who would later become president, and they quickly formed a close friendship. During his time at the college, he also befriended Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, who would become a renowned poet; Jonathan Cilley, a future congressman; and Horatio Bridge, a future naval reformer. He completed his studies with the class of 1825, subsequently recounting his collegiate experiences to Richard Henry Stoddard:

I was educated (as the phrase is) at Bowdoin College. I was an idle student, negligent of college rules and the Procrustean details of academic life, rather choosing to nurse my own fancies than to dig into Greek roots and be numbered among the learned Thebans.

Early career

Hawthorne's first published work, Fanshawe: A Tale, based on his experiences at Bowdoin College, was anonymously published in October 1828, funded by the author at a cost of $100. Despite generally positive critical reception, its sales performance was poor. Subsequently, he contributed several minor works to the Salem Gazette.

During 1836, Hawthorne held the editorial position for the American Magazine of Useful and Entertaining Knowledge. Concurrently, he resided as a boarder with the poet Thomas Green Fessenden on Hancock Street in Boston's Beacon Hill district. On January 17, 1839, he accepted an appointment as a weigher and gauger at the Boston Custom House, a position that offered an annual salary of $1,500. While employed there, he leased a room from George Stillman Hillard, who was Charles Sumner's business associate. Hawthorne pursued his writing in the relative seclusion of what he termed his "owl's nest" within the family residence. Reflecting on this period, he remarked: "I have not lived, but only dreamed about living." He contributed short stories, such as "Young Goodman Brown" and "The Minister's Black Veil," to various magazines and annuals; however, these works did not garner significant public recognition. In the spring of 1837, Horatio Bridge volunteered to finance the compilation of these stories into the volume Twice-Told Tales, a publication that subsequently established Hawthorne's local reputation.

Marriage and family

During his time at Bowdoin, Hawthorne made a wager with his friend Jonathan Cilley, betting a bottle of Madeira wine that Cilley would marry before him. By 1836, Hawthorne had won this wager, though he did not remain a lifelong bachelor. He engaged in public flirtations with Mary Silsbee and Elizabeth Peabody before commencing a courtship with Peabody's sister, Sophia Peabody, an illustrator and transcendentalist. In 1841, he joined the transcendentalist utopian community at Brook Farm, not due to ideological alignment with the experiment, but as a means to accumulate funds for his marriage to Sophia. He paid a $1,000 deposit and was assigned the task of shoveling the mound of manure, colloquially known as "the Gold Mine." He departed later that year; nevertheless, his experiences at Brook Farm served as inspiration for his novel The Blithedale Romance. Hawthorne and Sophia Peabody were married on July 9, 1842, in a ceremony held in the Peabody parlor on West Street in Boston. The couple subsequently relocated to The Old Manse in Concord, Massachusetts, residing there for three years. Although his neighbor Ralph Waldo Emerson extended invitations to his social circle, Hawthorne, characterized by an almost pathological shyness, remained largely silent during these gatherings. It was at The Old Manse that Hawthorne composed the majority of the narratives later compiled in Mosses from an Old Manse.

Sophia, similar to Hawthorne, exhibited a reclusive disposition. During her early life, she suffered from frequent migraines and received various experimental medical treatments. She was largely confined to bed until her sister introduced her to Hawthorne, subsequent to which her headaches reportedly diminished. The Hawthornes shared a lengthy and contented marriage. He affectionately called her his "Dove" and recorded 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!" Sophia held profound admiration for her husband's literary output, noting in one of her journals:

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.

On the first anniversary of the Hawthornes' marriage, the poet Ellery Channing sought assistance at The Old Manse. A local teenager, Martha Hunt, had drowned in the river, necessitating the use of Hawthorne's boat, Pond Lily, to locate her body. Hawthorne assisted in the recovery of the corpse, which he characterized as "a spectacle of such perfect horror ... She was the very image of death-agony." This incident subsequently served as inspiration for a scene in his novel The Blithedale Romance.

Nathaniel Hawthorne and his wife had three children. Their first child, Una, was born on March 3, 1844. Her name, a reference to Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene, reportedly caused displeasure among family members. Hawthorne expressed his sentiments on fatherhood in a letter to a friend, stating, "I find it a very sober and serious kind of happiness that springs from the birth of a child... There is no escaping it any longer. I have business on earth now, and must look about me for the means of doing it." In October 1845, the family relocated to Salem. Their son, Julian, was born in 1846. On June 22, 1846, Hawthorne humorously informed his sister Louisa of Julian's birth, writing: "A small troglodyte made his appearance here at ten minutes to six o'clock this morning, who claimed to be your nephew." Their third child, daughter Rose, was born in May 1851, whom Hawthorne affectionately referred to as his "autumnal flower".

Middle years

In April 1846, Hawthorne received an official appointment as the Surveyor for the District of Salem and Beverly, and Inspector of the Revenue for the Port of Salem, with an annual salary of $1,200. During this period, he encountered difficulties with his writing, a fact he confessed to Longfellow:

I am trying to resume my pen ... Whenever I sit alone, or walk alone, I find myself dreaming about stories, as of old; but these forenoons in the Custom House undo all that the afternoons and evenings have done. I should be happier if I could write.

This position, similar to his previous appointment at the Boston custom house, was susceptible to the political machinations of the spoils system. As a Democrat, Hawthorne consequently lost this employment following the change in administration in Washington after the 1848 presidential election. His letter of protest to the Boston Daily Advertiser sparked controversy, drawing criticism from the Whigs and support from the Democrats, thereby elevating his dismissal to a widely discussed event throughout New England. The death of his mother in late July profoundly impacted him; he described it as "the darkest hour I ever lived". In 1848, he was appointed the corresponding secretary of the Salem Lyceum. Notable speakers at the Lyceum that season included Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Louis Agassiz, and Theodore Parker.

Hawthorne resumed his literary career, publishing The Scarlet Letter in mid-March 1850. The novel's preface referenced his three-year tenure at the Custom House and contained allusions to local politicians, who reportedly disapproved of their portrayal. Recognized as one of America's first mass-produced books, it sold 2,500 copies within ten days and generated $1,500 in earnings for Hawthorne over a 14-year period. The work quickly became a bestseller in the United States, marking the beginning of his most financially successful period as an author. While Hawthorne's friend Edwin Percy Whipple criticized the novel's "morbid intensity" and intricate psychological details, asserting that the book "is therefore apt to become, like Hawthorne, too painfully anatomical in his exhibition of them," the 20th-century writer D. H. Lawrence lauded The Scarlet Letter as an unparalleled work of the American imagination.

At the close of March 1850, Hawthorne and his family relocated to a modest red farmhouse near Lenox, Massachusetts. His friendship with Herman Melville commenced on August 5, 1850, when the two authors encountered each other at a picnic hosted by a mutual acquaintance. Melville, having recently read Hawthorne's short story collection Mosses from an Old Manse, subsequently published an unsigned review of the collection titled "Hawthorne and His Mosses" in The Literary World on August 17 and 24. In this review, Melville suggested that Hawthorne's stories unveiled a darker aspect of his nature, describing it as "shrouded in blackness, ten times black". While composing his novel Moby-Dick, Melville dedicated the 1851 work to Hawthorne, stating: "In token of my admiration for his genius, this book is inscribed to Nathaniel Hawthorne."

Hawthorne's period in the Berkshires proved highly productive. During this time, he authored The House of the Seven Gables (1851), a work that poet and critic James Russell Lowell considered superior to The Scarlet Letter and lauded as "the most valuable contribution to New England history that has been made." He also completed The Blithedale Romance (1852), notably his sole first-person narrative. Additionally, he published A Wonder-Book for Girls and Boys in 1851, a compilation of short stories retelling myths, a project he had contemplated since 1846. Despite this productivity, poet Ellery Channing observed that Hawthorne "has suffered much living in this place". While the family appreciated the scenic beauty of the Berkshires, Hawthorne found the winters in their modest home disagreeable. Consequently, they departed on November 21, 1851. Hawthorne recorded his dissatisfaction, stating, "I am sick to death of Berkshire... I have felt languid and dispirited, during almost my whole residence."

The Wayside and Europe

The Hawthorne family relocated to Concord in May 1852, residing there until July 1853. In February of the following year, they acquired a residence known as The Hillside, formerly occupied by Amos Bronson Alcott and his family, subsequently renaming it The Wayside. Among their neighbors in Concord were notable figures such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. Tragically, in July 1852, his younger sister, Maria Louisa, perished in the catastrophic fire aboard the steamboat Henry Clay.

Hawthorne authored The Life of Franklin Pierce, a campaign biography for his friend, portraying Pierce as "a man of peaceful pursuits." Critic Horace Mann remarked, "If he makes out Pierce to be a great man or a brave man, it will be the greatest work of fiction he ever wrote." Within the biography, Hawthorne characterized Pierce as a statesman and soldier who achieved no significant accomplishments due to his inclination to "make little noise" and consequently "withdrew into the background." Notably, the biography omitted any mention of Pierce's drinking habits, despite prevailing rumors of his alcoholism. Instead, it underscored Pierce's conviction that slavery could not "be remedied by human contrivances" but would, eventually, "vanish like a dream."

Following Pierce's presidential election, Hawthorne received an appointment in 1853 as the United States consul in Liverpool, an event that occurred shortly after the release of Tanglewood Tales. This consular role was regarded as the most financially rewarding foreign service post of its era, with Hawthorne's wife describing it as "second in dignity to the Embassy in London." Throughout this tenure, he and his family resided within the Rock Park estate in Rock Ferry, occupying a house situated directly beside Tranmere Beach on the Wirral shore of the River Mersey. His personal journal indicates that, for his commute to the United States consulate in Liverpool, Hawthorne frequently traveled by steamboat, departing from the Rock Ferry Slipway at the terminus of Bedford Road. His consular appointment concluded in 1857, coinciding with the end of the Pierce administration. Subsequently, the Hawthorne family embarked on a tour of France and Italy, which lasted until 1860. While in Italy, Hawthorne, who had previously been clean-shaven, cultivated a prominent mustache.

The family returned to The Wayside in 1860, a year that also marked the publication of The Marble Faun, his first new literary work in seven years. Hawthorne acknowledged his significant aging, describing himself as "wrinkled with time and trouble."

Later years and death

At the commencement of the American Civil War, Hawthorne journeyed to Washington, D.C., accompanied by William D. Ticknor, where he encountered Abraham Lincoln and other prominent individuals. His observations from this trip were documented in the 1862 essay, "Chiefly About War Matters."

Deteriorating health impeded his ability to complete additional romance novels. Hawthorne experienced severe stomach pain and, despite his neighbor Bronson Alcott's concerns about his frail condition, insisted on a recuperative journey with his friend Franklin Pierce. During a tour of the White Mountains, he passed away in his sleep on May 19, 1864, in Plymouth, New Hampshire. Pierce dispatched a telegram to Elizabeth Peabody, requesting her to personally convey the news to Mrs. Hawthorne. Mrs. Hawthorne was too grief-stricken to manage the funeral arrangements independently. Julian, Hawthorne's son and a freshman at Harvard College, learned of his father's death the following day; coincidentally, on that same day, he underwent initiation into the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity, which involved being blindfolded and placed in a coffin. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow composed a tribute poem for Hawthorne, titled "The Bells of Lynn," published in 1866. Hawthorne's interment occurred on "Authors' Ridge" within Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Concord, Massachusetts. The pallbearers included Longfellow, Emerson, Alcott, Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., James T. Fields, and Edwin Percy Whipple. Emerson reflected on the funeral, stating: "I thought there was a tragic element in the event, that might be more fully rendered—in the painful solitude of the man, which, I suppose, could no longer be endured, & he died of it."

Initially, his wife Sophia and daughter Una were interred in England. However, in June 2006, their remains were reinterred in plots adjacent to Hawthorne's.

Writings

Hawthorne maintained a notably close professional relationship with his publishers, William Ticknor and James T. Fields. Hawthorne once confided in Fields, stating, "I care more for your good opinion than for that of a host of critics." Indeed, Fields was instrumental in persuading Hawthorne to develop The Scarlet Letter into a novel instead of a short story. Ticknor managed numerous personal affairs for Hawthorne, such as acquiring cigars, supervising financial records, and even procuring clothing. Ticknor passed away in Philadelphia in 1864, with Hawthorne present; a friend reported that Hawthorne was left "apparently dazed" by the event.

Literary style and themes

Nathaniel Hawthorne's literary contributions are categorized within romanticism, particularly dark romanticism, often presenting cautionary narratives that underscore guilt, sin, and evil as intrinsic human characteristics. A significant portion of his oeuvre draws inspiration from Puritan New England, integrating historical romance rich in symbolism and profound psychological motifs, sometimes approaching surrealism. His portrayals of historical periods function as a form of historical fiction, primarily serving as a medium to articulate recurring themes of inherited sin, culpability, and punitive consequences. Furthermore, his subsequent literary productions reveal a critical perspective on the Transcendentalism movement.

In the initial phase of his career, Hawthorne primarily focused on writing short stories. Nevertheless, following the publication of Twice-Told Tales, he expressed a modest opinion of the collection, anticipating minimal public acclaim. His four seminal romances, including The Scarlet Letter (1850), The House of the Seven Gables (1851), The Blithedale Romance (1852), and The Marble Faun (1860), were composed during the decade spanning 1850 to 1860. An additional novel-length romance, Fanshawe, appeared anonymously in 1828. Hawthorne distinguished a romance from a novel by asserting that the former was not constrained by the plausible or likely trajectory of everyday existence. In the preface to The House of the Seven Gables, Hawthorne characterized his approach to romance writing as employing an "atmospherical medium as to bring out or mellow the lights and deepen and enrich the shadows of the picture." Daniel Hoffman identified this "picture" as representing "the primitive energies of fecundity and creation."

Scholarly analyses of Hawthorne's female characters have frequently employed both feminist and historicist frameworks. Feminist scholars, in particular, focus on Hester Prynne, acknowledging that although she might not embody the "destined prophetess" of the future, the "angel and apostle of the coming revelation" is nonetheless destined to "be a woman." Camille Paglia interpreted Hester as a mystical figure, describing her as "a wandering goddess still bearing the mark of her Asiatic origins... moving serenely in the magic circle of her sexual nature." Lauren Berlant characterized Hester as "the citizen as woman," who personifies "love as a quality of the body that contains the purest light of nature," with her subsequent "traitorous political theory" serving as a "Female Symbolic" literalization of ineffective Puritan metaphors. Historicist interpretations position Hester as a protofeminist and an embodiment of the self-reliance and accountability that contributed to women's suffrage and, at times, reproductive autonomy. Anthony Splendora traced her literary lineage to other archetypal figures of fallen yet redeemed women, encompassing both historical and mythical personages. He cites examples such as Psyche from ancient legend; Heloise, involved in a twelfth-century French tragedy with philosopher Peter Abelard; Anne Hutchinson, identified as America's first heretic around 1636; and Margaret Fuller, a friend of the Hawthorne family. During Hester's initial depiction, Hawthorne draws a parallel between her, with "infant at her bosom," and Mary, Mother of Jesus, portraying her as "the image of Divine Maternity." In her examination of Victorian literature, where "galvanic outcasts" like Hester are prominent, Nina Auerbach asserted that Hester's transgression and subsequent redemption constituted "the novel's one unequivocally religious activity." Viewing Hester as a divine figure, Meredith A. Powers observed that her characterization represents "the earliest in American fiction that the archetypal Goddess appears quite graphically," depicting a Goddess "not the wife of traditional marriage, permanently subject to a male overlord." Powers further highlighted "her syncretism, her flexibility, her inherent ability to alter and so avoid the defeat of secondary status in a goal-oriented civilization."

Beyond Hester Prynne, the exemplary female characters in Hawthorne's other novels—including Ellen Langton from Fanshawe, Zenobia and Priscilla from The Blithedale Romance, Hilda and Miriam from The Marble Faun, and Phoebe and Hepzibah from The House of the Seven Gables—are generally depicted with greater depth than their male counterparts, who often serve as peripheral figures. This pattern extends to his short stories, where central female characters function as allegorical representations: examples include Rappaccini's beautiful yet life-altering, garden-confined daughter; the nearly flawless Georgiana from "The Birth-Mark"; the wronged and abandoned Ester in "Ethan Brand"; and goodwife Faith Brown, who is central to Young Goodman Brown's religious conviction. "My Faith is gone!" Brown cries out in desperation upon encountering his wife at the Witches' Sabbath. Mark Van Doren offers perhaps the most comprehensive assessment of Hawthorne's creative drive, stating: "Somewhere, if not in the New England of his time, Hawthorne unearthed the image of a goddess supreme in beauty and power."

Nathaniel Hawthorne also produced works of nonfiction. In 2008, the Library of America included Hawthorne's "A show of wax-figures" in its two-century retrospective collection of American True Crime.

Critical reception

Nathaniel Hawthorne's literary works garnered significant acclaim during his lifetime. While contemporary critics lauded his sentimentality and moral clarity, more recent analyses tend to emphasize the profound psychological intricacies within his narratives. Herman Melville, in his fervent review titled "Hawthorne and His Mosses" of Mosses from an Old Manse, asserted that Hawthorne belonged to "one of the new, and far better generation of your writers." Melville articulated a growing admiration for Hawthorne, stating, "I feel that this Hawthorne has dropped germinous seeds into my soul. He expands and deepens down, the more I contemplate him; and further, and further, shoots his strong New-England roots into the hot soil of my Southern soul." Edgar Allan Poe also provided notable reviews for both Twice-Told Tales and Mosses from an Old Manse. Poe's critical perspective was influenced by his disdain for allegory and didactic narratives, alongside his frequent allegations of plagiarism; nevertheless, he conceded:

The style of Mr. Hawthorne is purity itself. His tone is singularly effective—wild, plaintive, thoughtful, and in full accordance with his themes ... We look upon him as one of the few men of indisputable genius to whom our country has as yet given birth.

In 1828, John Neal's periodical, The Yankee, published the initial significant public commendation of Hawthorne, predicting that the author of Fanshawe possessed "a fair prospect of future success." Ralph Waldo Emerson observed, "Nathaniel Hawthorne's reputation as a writer is a very pleasing fact, because his writing is not good for anything, and this is a tribute to the man." Henry James lauded Hawthorne, remarking, "The fine thing in Hawthorne is that he cared for the deeper psychology, and that, in his way, he tried to become familiar with it." Poet John Greenleaf Whittier expressed admiration for the "weird and subtle beauty" evident in Hawthorne's narratives. Evert Augustus Duyckinck characterized Hawthorne as, "Of the American writers destined to live, he is the most original, the one least indebted to foreign models or literary precedents of any kind."

From the 1950s onward, critical discourse surrounding Hawthorne's work has increasingly concentrated on its symbolic elements and didactic undertones.

Literary critic Harold Bloom posited that only Henry James and William Faulkner rival Hawthorne's standing as the preeminent American novelist, though Bloom personally considered James to be the greatest. Bloom identified Hawthorne's most significant works primarily as The Scarlet Letter, succeeded by The Marble Faun, and several short stories, such as "My Kinsman, Major Molineux," "Young Goodman Brown," "Wakefield," and "Feathertop."

Selected works

Rita K. Gollin, a prominent Hawthorne scholar, identifies The Centenary Edition of the Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne as the authoritative collection of his writings. This edition, edited by William Charvat and other scholars, was published by The Ohio State University Press in twenty-three volumes from 1962 to 1997. Within the Library of America series, Tales and Sketches (1982) constituted the second volume, while Collected Novels (1983) was the tenth.

Novels

• Fanshawe (published anonymously, 1828)
• The Scarlet Letter, A Romance (1850)
• The House of the Seven Gables, A Romance (1851)
• The Blithedale Romance (1852)
• The Marble Faun: Or, The Romance of Monte Beni (1860) (as Transformation: Or, The Romance of Monte Beni, UK publication, same year)
• The Dolliver Romance (1863) (unfinished)
• Septimius Felton; or, the Elixir of Life (unfinished, published in the Atlantic Monthly, 1872)
• Doctor Grimshawe's Secret: A Romance (unfinished, with preface and notes by Julian Hawthorne, 1882)

Short story collections

• Twice-Told Tales (1837)
• Legends of the Province House (1838–1839)
• Grandfather's Chair (1840)
• Mosses from an Old Manse (1846)
• A Wonder-Book for Girls and Boys (1851)
• The Snow-Image, and Other Twice-Told Tales (1852)
• Tanglewood Tales (1853)
• The Dolliver Romance and Other Pieces (1876)
• The Great Stone Face and Other Tales of the White Mountains (1889)

Selected short stories

• "The Hollow of the Three Hills" (1830)
• "Roger Malvin's Burial" (1832)
• "My Kinsman, Major Molineux" (1832)
• "Young Goodman Brown" (1835)
• "The Gray Champion" (1835)
• "The White Old Maid" (1835)
• "Wakefield" (1835)
• "The Ambitious Guest" (1835)
• "The Minister's Black Veil" (1836)
• "The Man of Adamant" (1837)
• "The May-Pole of Merry Mount" (1837)
• "The Great Carbuncle" (1837)
• "Dr. Heidegger's Experiment" (1837)
• "A Virtuoso's Collection" (May 1842)
• "The Birth-Mark" (March 1843)
• "The Celestial Railroad" (1843)
• "Egotism; or, The Bosom-Serpent" (1843)
• "Earth's Holocaust" (1844)
• "Rappaccini's Daughter" (1844)
• "P.'s Correspondence" (1845)
• "The Artist of the Beautiful" (1846)
• "Fire Worship" (1846)
• "Ethan Brand" (1850)
• "The Great Stone Face" (1850)
• "Feathertop" (1852)

Nonfiction

• Life of Franklin Pierce (1852)
• Our Old Home: A Series of English Sketches (1863)
• Passages from the English Note-Books (1870)
• Passages from the French and Italian Note-Books (1871)
• Passages from the American Note-Books (1879)
• Twenty Days with Julian & Little Bunny, a Diary (written 1851, published 1904), an excerpt from Passages from the American Note-Books.

References

Notes

Sources

• Bell, Michael Davitt. Hawthorne and the Historical Romance of New England. Princeton University Press (2015).
• Forster, Sophia. "Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and the Emergence of American Literary Realism". Studies in the Novel 48.1 (2016): 43–64.
• Greven, David. Gender Protest and Same-Sex Desire in Antebellum American Literature: Margaret Fuller, Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Herman Melville (2015).
• Hallock, Thomas. "'A' is for Acronym: Teaching Hawthorne in a Performance-Based World". ESQ: A Journal of Nineteenth-Century American Literature and Culture 62#1 (2016): 116–121.
• Hawthorne, Julian. Nathaniel Hawthorne and His Wife: A Biography (2 vols.). Cambridge University Press (1884); Boston: James R. Osgood and Company (1885).
• Hawthorne, Julian. Hawthorne and His Circle. New York and London: Harper & Brothers Publishers (1903).
• Hawthorne, Julian. The Memoirs of Julian Hawthorne, Edited by His Wife Edith Garrigues Hawthorne. New York: The Macmillan Company (1938).
Levin, Harry (1980). The Power of Blackness: Hawthorne, Poe, Melville. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press. ISBN 9780821405819.
• Parks, Tim. "Hawthorne's Mood Swings", The New York Review of Books, November 21, 2024 (review of Salwak, Dale, The Life of the Author: Nathaniel Hawthorne).
• Reynolds, Larry J., ed. A Historical Guide to Nathaniel Hawthorne. New York: Oxford University Press (2001).
• Salwak, Dale. The Life of the Author: Nathaniel Hawthorne. Chichester: Wiley Blackwell (2022). ISBN 978-1-119-77181-4
• Scribner, David, ed. Hawthorne Revisited: Honoring the Bicentennial of the Author's Birth. Lenox, Massachusetts: Lenox Library Association (2004).
• Ticknor, Caroline. Hawthorne and His Publisher. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company (1913).
• Williamson, Richard Joseph. "Friendship, politics, and the literary imagination: The impact of Franklin Pierce on Hawthorne's work" (PhD dissertation, University of North Texas, ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 1996. 9638512).
• Young, Philip. Hawthorne's Secret: An Un-Told Tale. Boston: David R. Godine (1984).

• The digital collection of Nathaniel Hawthorne's works, housed at the Phillips Library of the Peabody Essex Museum.
• The Hawthorne in Salem online resource.
• Nathaniel Hawthorne's entry in the Internet Speculative Fiction Database.
• The C. E. Frazer Clark collection pertaining to Nathaniel Hawthorne, located within the Irvin Department of Rare Books and Special Collections at the University of South Carolina.
• The Hawthorne Family Papers, spanning approximately 1825 to 1929, are preserved in the Department of Special Collections at Stanford University Libraries.
• A segment titled "Writings of Nathaniel Hawthorne" from C-SPAN's program, American Writers: A Journey Through History.
• The joint diary maintained by Sophia and Nathaniel Hawthorne, archived on February 2, 2014, via the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine, and accessible at The Morgan Library & Museum.
• The Nathaniel Hawthorne Collection, part of the Yale Collection of American Literature, housed at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.
• The Hawthorne Community Association and the preserved boyhood home of Nathaniel Hawthorne in Raymond, Maine.
• The historic House of the Seven Gables, located in Salem, Massachusetts.

Works

• Digitized works by Nathaniel Hawthorne available through Project Gutenberg.
• A collection of works by or about Nathaniel Hawthorne, accessible via the Internet Archive.
• Audiobook recordings of Nathaniel Hawthorne's public domain works, provided by LibriVox .