American · 1804–1864
Nathaniel Hawthorne spent decades in obscurity before becoming America foremost romancer. Born in Salem, Massachusetts, he descended from Puritan judges, including one who presided over the witch trials—a legacy that haunted his fiction. After college he returned to Salem and wrote in isolation for twelve years, producing tales collected in Twice-Told Tales. His breakthrough came with The Scarlet Letter in 1850, a study of sin and guilt in Puritan Boston that became the first American novel to achieve classic status immediately upon publication. The House of the Seven Gables followed, exploring inherited guilt across generations. Hawthorne befriended Melville, who dedicated Moby-Dick to him. He served as U.S. consul in Liverpool, traveled in Italy (the setting for The Marble Faun), and died while traveling with former president Franklin Pierce, his college friend. Hawthorne invented the American literary tradition of symbolic romance, exploring moral psychology through allegory while maintaining novelistic ambiguity. His investigations of guilt, secret sin, and the Puritan inheritance shaped all subsequent American fiction.