"The Home Life of Poe."—Weiss.
"Poe" ("American Men of Letters").—Woodberry.
"The Mind and Art of Poe's Poetry."—Fruit.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
(1804–1864)
Nathaniel Hawthorne, by general repute the greatest of American novelists, was of sound New England lineage, and his forefathers had for generations followed the sea. After graduating from Bowdoin College, where he had formed a close friendship with Longfellow and Pierce, he returned to Salem, resolved to take up literature as a life-work.
Here he wrote for years, but with so little success that he was glad to accept of George Bancroft, the historian, the offer of a subordinate position in the Boston Custom House. He had, however, just previously published his first work, "Twice-Told Tales," to be followed, upon his retirement from the custom house with the change of administration, by "Grandfather's Chair."
Some years after he was appointed surveyor of customs at Salem, then an important port, and the succession of tales which had come from his pen for so many years suddenly ceased. But during the following four years of apparent cessation of literary endeavor, he was but husbanding his forces for a final effort, and the year 1850 witnessed the publication of his masterpiece, "The Scarlet Letter," the epic of sin and remorse, by common consent the best American romance and by many held without an equal, either here or abroad.
His old schoolmate, Franklin Pierce, having become President of the United States, Hawthorne was appointed Consul to Liverpool, and upon the expiration of his term spent two years traveling in France, Switzerland, and Italy. The "English Note Books" and "Our Old Home" tell of his life in England, and "The Marble Faun," one of his greatest works, is the product of his wanderings in Italy.