January Classic Challenge: Nathaniel Hawthorne

For the January Classics Challenge: Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter

As part of the Classics Challenge, I have started to read The Scarlett Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne.

This is a photo taken in 1848, about 3 years before The Scarlet Letter was published and probably would have looked somewhat like this at the time of the writing of his most famous work.

He was born on July 4, 1804, a year after the Louisiana Purchase was announced in 1803, in Salem, Mass. His father, who was a sea captain, died when Nathaniel was about 4 years old.  He mainly lived in the Salem area while growing, but lived in Maine from 1816 until he was sent away for school in 1819.    After he finished college in 1825, it is uncertain where he lived until 1839, when he moved to Boston to work at the Boston Custom House for about three years.  After marrying, he and his wife eventually settled in Concord.  After the publication of The Scarlet Letter, he moved his family to Lennox, Mass., returning a couple years later to Concord.  In 1853, he was awarded the position of United States consul in Liverpool.  Four years later, his appointment ended and the family toured France and Italy, eventually returning to the States in 1860.  He died in May, 1864.

Some of the other novels he wrote where The House of the Seven Gables, The Blithedale Romance, and The Marble Faun: Or, The Romance of Monte Beni.

Some interesting facts:
• was a neighbour of both Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau
• was a friend of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., Franklin Pierce and Herman Melville
• the home they bought in Concord in 1852 was previously own by Amos Bronson Alcott
• went to college with the future poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, future congressman Jonathan Cilley, and future naval reformer Horatio Bridge.

Information taken from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nathaniel_Hawthorne