His dismissal, however, turned out to be a blessing, since it gave him time in which to write his greatest success, The Scarlet Letter. The association was more important to Melville than to Hawthorne, since Melville was fifteen years younger and the much more impressionable easily influenced of the two men. It left its mark in dedication of his Moby-Dick, and in some wonderful letters.
In Franklin Pierce was elected president of the United States, and Hawthorne, who wrote his campaign biography, was appointed to the important overseas post of American consul advisor at Liverpool, England. He served in this post from to In the Hawthornes left England for Italy, where they spent their time primarily in Rome and Florence.
They returned to England, where Hawthorne finished his last and longest complete novel, The Marble Faun They finally returned to the United States, after an absence of seven years, and took up residence in their first permanent home, The Wayside, at Concord.
Although he had always been an exceptionally active man, Hawthorne's health began to fail him. Since he refused to submit to any thorough medical examination, the details of his declining health remain mysterious.
Hawthorne died on May 19, He had set off for the New Hampshire hills with Franklin Pierce, an activity he had always enjoyed, hoping to regain his health. But he died the second night in Plymouth, New Hampshire, presumably in his sleep. Hawthorne once said that New England was enough to fill his heart, yet he sought the broader experience of Europe.
Modest in expectations, he had nonetheless desired to live fully. Hawthorne's life and writings present a complex puzzle. A born writer, he suffered the difficulties of his profession in early-nineteenth-century America, an environment unfriendly to artists.
Bloom, Harold, ed. However, when Whig President Zachary Taylor was elected, Hawthorne lost his appointment due to political favoritism.
The dismissal turned into a blessing giving him time to write his masterpiece, The Scarlet Letter , the story of two lovers who clashed with the Puritan moral law. The book was one of the first mass-produced publications in the United States and its wide distribution made Hawthorne famous.
During the election, Hawthorne wrote a campaign biography for his college friend Pierce. After serving as consul, Hawthorne took his family on an extended vacation to Italy and then back to England. In , he finished his last novel The Marble Faun. That same year Hawthorne moved his family back to the United States and took permanent residence at The Wayside in Concord, Massachusetts. After , it was becoming apparent that Hawthorne was moving past his prime. Striving to rekindle his earlier productivity, he found little success.
Since most of his stories consisted of moral, cautionary tales about guilt, sin and retribution, many readers consider his work to be dark and sometimes gloomy. Hawthorne continued to write more novels throughout the s until he was appointed to the consulship in Liverpool, England by his old college friend President Franklin Pierce. While in Europe he wrote The Marble Faun, based on his sight-seeing experiences in Italy, and Our Old Home before moving back to his house in Concord in the early s.
Hawthorne suffered from poor health in the s and died in his sleep during a trip to the White Mountains with Franklin Pierce on May 19, He is buried at Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Concord.
Sources: Waggoner, Hyatt H. Nathaniel Hawthorne American. University of Minnesota Press, Moore, Margaret B. The Salem World of Nathaniel Hawthorne. University of Missouri Press, Hi Mason, thanks for your comment. What was the question you had? Just happened on this page by accident and wanted to say it was well written and interesting. In , Hawthorne wrote The Scarlet Letter, which won him much fame and greatly increased his reputation. While warmly received here and abroad, The Scarlet Letter sold only 8, copies in Hawthorne's lifetime.
In , when the family moved to Lennox, Massachusetts, Hawthorne made the acquaintance of Herman Melville, a young writer who became a good friend. Hawthorne encouraged the young Melville, who later thanked him by dedicating his book, Moby Dick, to him. Because there was little to no literature published for children, Hawthorne's book was unique in this area. In Concord, the Hawthornes found a permanent house, along with nine acres of land, which they purchased from Bronson Alcott, the transcendentalist writer and father of Louisa May Alcott.
Hawthorne renamed the house The Wayside, and in May, , he and his family moved in. Here, Hawthorne was to write only two of his works: Tanglewood Tales, another collection designed for young readers, and A Life of Pierce, a campaign biography for his old friend from college.
The Hawthornes spent the next seven years in Europe. Although Hawthorne wrote no additional fiction while serving as consul, he kept a journal that later served as a source of material for Our Old Home, a collection of sketches dealing with English scenery, life, and manners published in While in Italy, Hawthorne kept a notebook that provided material for his final, complete work of fiction, which was published in England as Transformation and, in America, as The Marble Faun.
By the autumn of , Hawthorne was a sick man. In May, , he traveled to New Hampshire with his old classmate Pierce in search of improved health. During this trip, he died in his sleep on May 19, , in Plymouth, New Hampshire. He was buried in the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery at Concord. Widely eulogized as one of America's foremost writers, his fellow authors gathered to show their respect. Among his pallbearers were Longfellow, Holmes, Lowell, and Emerson. Previous Character Map.
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