Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE (1804-1864), one of the greatest authors of the nineteenth century, transformed the art of fiction. The author of numerous novels and short stories, including The Scarlet Letter and The House of the Seven Gables, he was an acknowledged master of the form, and admired for his explorations of ancestral sin, guilt, and the concept of justice. Herman Melville dedicated his epic novel, Moby Dick to Hawthorne: "In token of my admiration for his genius." 


Some of Hawthorne’s darkest works, including his ghost stories and tales involving the supernatural, fall within the genre of Gothic Literature. 


Young Hawthorne was a contemporary of fellow authors Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Louisa May Alcott, and was part of this prominent circle of Massachusetts writers and philosophers. 


Hawthorne lived in New England most of his life, and at one point lived in Concord, Massachusetts, where he lived near Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. 


He died on May 19, 1864 and was buried in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Concord, Massachusetts.