Assignment on The Scarlet Letter : Life of The Author
Name :-
Rajdip.P.Gohel
Roll. No:- 27
Paper No:- 10- The
American Literature
Class:- M.A Sem-3
Topic:- The Scarlet
Letter: Life Of The Author
Enrolment No:-
2069108420190017
College:-
Smt.S.B.Gardi Department Of English
Submitted:-
Department Of English M.K.University, Bhavnagar
Born July 4, 1804, Nathaniel Hathorne was the
only son of Cap- tain Nathaniel Hathorne and Elizabeth Clarke Manning Hathorne.
(Nathaniel added the "w" to the spelling of the family name shortly
after his graduation from college in order to make the spelling of the name
conform to the way it was pronounced.) Captain Hathorne died in Dutch Guiana in
1808, leaving his four-year-old son with his mother and two sisters, Elizabeth
and Maria Louisa.
Following the death of
Captain Hathorne, the family was forced to move in with Mrs. Hathorne's
relatives, the Mannings. There they came under the close scrutiny of
Grandmother Manning and two uncles, Richard and Robert Manning. It was during
this period that Hawthorne's mother began to withdraw into what was later to
become a lifetime of near-seclusion.
Even though
Nathaniel began his early studies with Joseph E Worcester, who became a
well-known lexicographer, he was not particularly fond of school. An injury to
his foot when he was nine years old allowed Nathaniel to avoid the regular
schooling to which the other boys were subjected. His sister Elizabeth reported
that the time at home gave him the opportunity to read Shakespeare, Spenser,
and Bunyan. During this period, Mrs. Hathorne moved the small family to the
banks of Sebago Lake, near the town of Raymond, Maine, where they lived on land
owned by the Manning family.
Although Nathaniel was sent to
school once again, his fondest memories during this period were of the times
when I ran quite wild, and would, I doubt not, have willingly run wild till
this time, fishing all day long, or shooting with an old fowling piece."
This idyllic life was to continue until 1819, when his Uncle Robert decided
that Nathaniel needed to return to Salem in order to continue his preparation
for entrance into college.
In 1821, Nathaniel entered Bowdin College.
Among his classmates were two young men who also attained fame. One, Henry
Wadsworth Longfellow, became a well-known poet; the other, Franklin Pier became
the fourteenth president of the United States. Another class. mate. Horatio
Bridge, was later to offer Boston publisher Samuel G Goodrich a guarantee
against loss if he would publish Hawthorne first collection of short tales.
Hawthorne was not an outstanding student at
Bowdin. He graduated in the middle of his class in 1825 and returned to his
mother's house, where he spent much of the next twelve years (1825-371 in what
he referred to as "this dismal chamber," an upstairs room in his
mother's home on Charter Street in Salem.
Many early critics were fascinated with this
twelve-year period of apparent isolation, and they speculated at length about
Hawthorne’s activities during that time. Recent scholars have shown that Hawthorne
himself was at least partially responsible for creating the myth of the
hermit-artist who labored in considerable isolation-not only from the world,
but from his family Hawthorne spent considerable time reading, writing, and
poring over books of colonial history, he was not the recluse that he would
have the world believe him to be. Hawthorne socialized in Salem and had a
number of innocent flirtations. Rather regularly, he also used the free passage
that was available on his uncle's stagecoach line in order to make summer
excursions around New England. One year he even traveled as far west as
Detroit.
Hawthorne's twelve-year apprenticeship in the
"chamber under the eaves' of his mother's house was not financially
rewarding. He did, however, practice and then master his craft there, and in
1828, he published his first novel, Fanshaw: A Tale, at his own expense
Dissatisfied with the work, he later recalled the book and destroyed all the
copies he could find. Then, in 1830, the Salem Gazette published his first
story, The Hollow of the Three Hills. By 1838, he had written more than
two-thirds of the tales and sketches he was to write during his lifetime.
Unfortunately, he was unable to interest a publisher in bringing out a
collection of his tales before 1837, and, as a conse-quence, many of them were
printed in newspapers, magazines, and the popular literary annuals that were
published in the fall of the year and sold as genteel Christmas gifts. Since
the stories in these publications were generally printed anonymously, Hawthorne
gained no public notice as a writer until 1837, when Bridge backed the
publication of the first volume of Twice-Told Tales.
Frustrated by his inability to find a
publisher who would bring out a collection of his tales, Hawthorne turned to
literary hack work in 1836. From March to August of that year, he worked as the
editor of the American Magazine of Useful and Entertaining Knowledge for the
salary of five hundred dollars per year. When a fire forced the magazine into
bankruptcy, Hawthorne resigned and undertook, with the help of his sister
Elizabeth, the task of writing a history volume for Goodrich entitled, Peter
Paley's Universal History. Although the book was popular and Goodrich made a
good profit from it, Hawthorne was paid only one hundred dollars for the work.
With the publication of Twice-Told Tales in
1837, Hawthorne's name was finally before the public. His modest success,
however was not to provide him with an income sufficient to support a family.
Consequently, after he met Sophia Peabody in 1838 and became engaged to her in
1839, he found it necessary to seek better-paying work. In order to save money
for his marriage, Hawthorne, with the help of some influential friends, secured
a job as a measurer of salt and coal in the Custom House at Boston. Unhappily,
his duties there tired him to the point that he was unable to produce any
additional fiction during this period. Then, as a result of a change in the
political party controlling the government, Hawthorne decided to resign from
this position in 1841.
Still not convinced that he had adequate
financial security to marry, Hawthorne invested a thousand dollars of his
meager capital in the Brook Farm Community at West Roxbury. There is evidence
to indicate that Hawthorne had hoped to provide a means of livelihood for
himself and his bride-to-be, but the work schedule at Brook Farm left him
exhausted and gave him little time to write. Finally, the work schedule,
Hawthorne's lack of sympathy with the Transcendentalist viewpoint espoused by
the community, and the fact that the farm appeared to be financially
unsuccessful, led Hawthorne to write to Sophia: Thou and I must form other
plans for ourselves." He resigned from the community in November, 1841.
Impatient over the long engagement to Sophia
and encouraged by a trip to Boston, where he reached an understanding about the
rate of pay for future contributions to the Democratic Review Hawthorne decided
to marry. He and Sophia Peabody were married in Boston on July 9, 1842, and
immediately following the ceremony, they left for Concord, Massachusetts, where
they took up residence in the now-famous Old Manse." There, Hawthorne had
many of the leading Transcendentalists of the day as neighbours and associates.
The most famous were Emerson, Thoreau, Fuller, and Alcott. Life at the Old
Manse was both happy and productive. Hawthorne was able to con. tribute to the
Democratic Review and to produce some of the tales which were to appear in
Mosses from an Old Manse, published in 1846.
Financial problems, however, continued to
plague the family. The birth of their first child, Una-named after the heroine
of Spenser's Faerie Queen-led Hawthorne once again to seek government
employment. With the help of his friends, Hawthorne succeeded in being
appointed "Surveyor for the District of Salem and Beverly and Inspector of
the Revenue for the Port of Salem." He was installed in that April 22,
1846, at a salary of $1,200 per year. On June 22 Julian, was born. Although the
new job eased the financial office on his son problems for the family,
Hawthorne again found little time to pursue his writing. His experiences during
this time, however, provided some of the material which he later used in the
"Custom House section of The Scarlet Letter.
The victory of the Whigs in the 1848
presidential election cost Hawthorne his position. It was a financial shock to
the family, but the loss of the position at the Custom House provided the time
neces-sary for him to write The Scarlet Letter.
The death of Hawthorne's mother on July 31,
1849, placed both emotional and financial strains on him, but with the help of
money which Sophia had, unknown to Hawthorne, saved from her allowance for
household expenses, he resolved to try once again to earn his living as a
writer. During the next seven months, Hawthorne worked both mornings and
afternoons in order to finish The Scarlet Letter.
The book sold well, but it was pirated by two
London publishers and thus the financial rewards were not great for Hawthorne.
In addition, Hawthorne was exposed to the wrath of a number of Salemites who
were angry about certain passages from the "Custom House sec to the
"Little Red House" in Lennox. Massachusetts, where they lived until
November 21, 1851. It was there that Hawthorne made the acquaintance of Herman
Melville, who was writing Moby Dich Melville's dedication of the novel to
Hawthorne is evidence of Haw-thorne's impact on Melville.
The period at the "Little Red House was a
productive time for Hawthorne as it was here that he wrote The House of the
Seven Gables and he also produced other minor works that were to be published
during 1851. It was here, also, that Hawthorne's second daughter, Rose, was
born. Hawthorne was not happy with the climate in the Berkshires, yet it is
probable that the family would have stayed there another winter, had not a
dispute arisen between the owners of the house and the Hawthornes over the use
of fruit from an adjoining orchard. When they were offered the use of the house
of Congressman Horace Mann, Sophia's brother-in-law, the Hawthornes decided to
accept the offer. They moved to West Newton, and the following year 1852,
Hawthorne published The Blithedale Romance, based on his experiences at Brook
Farm, and A Wonder Book for Girls and Boys.
The
Mann home was only a temporary expedient, and the Hawthornes continued to look
for a permanent house, which they finally found, along with nine acres of land,
in Concord, for $1,500. Bronson Alcott, the Transcendentalist writer from whom
Hawthorne purchased the house, called it The Hillside. Hawthorne objected name
because the house stood at the base of "a steep ascent," so he
renamed the place The Wayside." The Hawthornes moved into their new home
in May, 1852.
“The Wayside” was the Hawthornes first
permanent home; it even contained an elaborately decorated study, but Hawthorne
wrote only two of his works there. One, Tanglewood Tales, was another collection
designed for a young audience; the other, A Life of Pierce, was written as a
campaign biography for his former classmate and the future president of the
United States. As a result of the Pierce biography. Hawthorne was rewarded with
an appointment as United States Consul at Liverpool, England.
While serving as consul, Hawthorne wrote no
additional fiction. He did, however, keep a journal which later served as
source material for Our Old Home, a collection of sketches dealing with English
scenery, life, and manners published in 1863. Hawthorne remained as consul
until August 31, 1857, when he resigned following the election of President
Buchanan. Following his resignation, the Hawthornes moved to Italy, where he
and his family lived in Rome and Florence from 1858 to 1859.
While
in Italy, the Hawthornes visited art museums and toured historical sites.
Hawthorne also kept a notebook which was to provide material for his final,
complete work of fiction, The Marble Faun Returning to England, Hawthorne
finished the manuscript for The Marble Faun; it was published on June 16, 1860,
the Hawthornes sailed from Liverpool, bound for Boston.
The remaining years of Hawthorne's life were
mixed with both pleasure and frustration. Returning to The Wayside,"
Hawthorne invested in expensive renovations of the house which he could ill
afford. He was constantly apprehensive because he was afraid that the illness
which had afflicted Una in Rome might recur. Despite these anxieties, though,
life settled into a somewhat comfortable routine and between various social
activities, Hawthorne began to work again.
By the autumn of the following year, Hawthorne
was a sick man Despite his illness, however, he went to Boston in December to
attend the funeral of the wife of his old friend Pierce. By March of the
following year, Sophia wrote to a friend that Hawthorne was "indeed very
indisposed." In an attempt to improve his health, Hawthorne decided to
take a trip to Havana with another friend, W. D. Ticknor. Bad weather prevented
their sailing, so the two friends went on to Philadelphia, where Ticknor came
down with pneumonia and died on April 10, 1864. Shaken by the loss of his
friend, Hawthorne's health continued to decline. A month later, he decided to
travel to New Hampshire with his old classmate Pierce in search of improved
health During this trip, Hawthorne died in his sleep Plymouth, New Hampshire.
He was buried in the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery at Concord. Among his pallbearers
were Longfellow, Holmes Lowell, and Emerson. Former President Pierce
accompanied Ms Hawthorne and the children to the funeral.
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