Nathaniel Hawthorne

Nathaniel Hawthorne was an American novelist and short story writer in the dark romantic movement. Encyclopedia Britannica describes him as “One of the greatest fiction writers in American literature”. 

Hawthorne published his first novel, Fanshawe, in 1828, but later tried to suppress it, feeling that it was not on par with his other writing.^[2] He wrote a number of short stories in periodicals, which he republished in the 1837 collection Twice-Told Tales.

Hawthorne’s most famous book, The Scarlet Letter, was published in 1850. Like much of his writing, it was set in New England and explored moral metaphors, Puritanism, and the psychological nuances of universal human frailties.

In his personal life, Hawthorne publicly flirted with Mary Silsbee and Elizabeth Peabody^[27] before pursuing Peabody’s sister, the transcendentalist artist Sophia Peabody. He joined a transcendentalist Utopian community 1841, though he was never a true believer. Rather, his accommodations allowed him to save the funds necessary to marry Sophia, which he did. The two enjoyed a long and happy marriage.

Nathaniel also struck up an intense friendship with fellow author Herman Melville. The letters they exchanged were filled with sensual language and homoerotic imagery, leading some literary scholars to speculate as to whether their relationship or feelings for one another were more than platonic.