Nathaniel Hawthorne
By Daija Latham
Who Is Nathaniel
Hawthorne?
 Born: July 4, 1804
Died: May 19,1864
 He was the son of Elizabeth Clarke Manning and Nathaniel
Hathorne. He added the "w" to his name when he began
publishing.
 Hawthorne attended Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine
(1821-24)
 After college, he settled in Salem and continued writing.
 Between about 1825 and 1850, he developed his talent by
writing short fiction and the novel Fanshawe (1828).
 He was a member of the Brook Farm community near
Boston briefly in 1841 .
 Hawthorne married Sophia Peabody in 1842.
 Hawthorne called his writing "romance," which he defined
as a method of showing "the depths of our common nature.”
He thought of romance as confronting reality, not evading
it.
Major Interests &
Accomplishments
 He graduated from Bowdoin College in 1825.
 Hawthorne became one of the leading writers of his time.
 He earned world wide fame for his novel, The Scarlett
Letter
 Some of Hawthorne’s other works include The Blithedale
Romance (1852), The Marble Faun (1860), and The House of
Seven Gables (1851)
 In 1853, President Pierce appointed Hawthorne to a fouryear term as United States consul in Liverpool, England.
 In 1851, Herman Melville dedicated Moby Dick to
Hawthorne.
 Hawthorne’s main interest was to show humanity the
impact and consequences of their actions and emotions.
 Like Edgar Allan Poe, Hawthorne took a dark view of
human nature.
He Said That?–
Significant Quotes
 “Happiness is like a butterfly which, when pursued, is
always beyond our grasp, but, if you will sit down
quietly, may alight upon you.”
 “No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face
to himself and another to the multitude, without finally
getting bewildered as to which may be the true.”
 “Words - so innocent and powerless as they are, as
standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil
they become in the hands of one who knows how to
combine them.”
 “Let men tremble to win the hand of woman, unless they
win along with it the utmost passion of her heart!”
― Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter
Hawthorne’s Impact
 The themes of most of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s works
center around morality, sin, and redemption.
 He moved away from formalism and dived into exploring
the ideas of self-responsibility, the importance of
individualism and man’s relationship to nature.
 He mostly sought out change in Puritan New England
but he managed to impact the entire nation.
 He emphasized that society can be cruel by alienating
people on accord of who they were or what they are.
Quiz Time!!! 
1. What is Hawthorne’s most famous and influential book?
The Scarlett Letter
2. Where did Hawthorne go to college?
Bowdoin College
3. What was his wife’s name?
Sophia Peabody
4. Which of his books did the following quote come from:
“Let men tremble to win the hand of woman, unless
they win along with it the utmost passion of her heart!”
The Scarlett Letter
5. Who dedicated their book to Hawthorne in 1851?
Herman Melville, Moby Dick
Sources
 http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americannovel/timeline/ha
wthorne.html
 http://www.online-literature.com/hawthorne/
 https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/7799.Nath
aniel_Hawthorne
 http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/hawthorn.htm