This week (March 13-19) in literary history – Henrik Ibsen’s
Ghosts opened in London (March 13,
1891); Sylvia Beach was born (March 14, 1887); Max Brand published his first
novel (March 14, 1919); Nathaniel Hawthorne published The Scarlett Letter (March 16, 1850); Novelist Paul Green was born
(March 17, 1894); John Updike was born (March 18, 1932).
Highlighted Story of
the Week -
On March 16, 1850, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlett Letter, a story of adultery
and betrayal in colonial America was published. Hawthorne was born July 4, 1804
in Salem, Massachusetts. Although the infamous Salem witch trials had taken
place more than 100 years earlier, the events still hung over the town and made
a lasting impression on the young Hawthorne. Witchcraft figured in several of
his works, including Young Goodman Brown
(1835) and The House of the Seven Gables
(1851), in which a house is cursed by a wizard condemned by the witch trials.
After attending Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine,
Hawthorne returned to Salem, where he began his career as a writer. He
self-published his first book, Fanshawe
(1828), but tried to destroy all copies shortly after publication. He later
wrote several books of short stories, including Twice Told Tales (1837). In 1841, he tried his hand at communal
living at the agricultural cooperative Brook Farm but came away highly
disillusioned by the experience, which he fictionalized in his novel The Blithedale Romance (1852).
Hawthorne married his childhood sweetheart Sophia Peabody in
1842, having at last earned enough money from his writing to start a family.
The two lived in Concord, Massachusetts, and socialized with Ralph Waldo Emerson,
Henry David Thoreau, and Branson Alcott, father of writer Louisa May Alcott. Plagued
by financial difficulties as his family grew, he took a job in 1845 at Salem’s
custom house, where he worked for three years. After leaving the job, he spent
several months writing The Scarlet Letter,
which made him famous. In 1853, Hawthorne’s college friend, President Franklin
Pierce, appointed him American consul to England, where they lived for three
years. Hawthorne died in Plymouth, New Hampshire on May 19, 1864 and was buried
at Sleepy Hollow Cemetery on Poets’ Ridge in Concord, Massachusetts, near many
of his friends and contemporaries such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Louisa May
Alcott and Henry David Thoreau.
Check back every
Friday for a new installment of “This Week in Literary History.”
Michael Thomas Barry is the author of six nonfiction books
that includes the award winning Literary
Legends of the British Isles and the recently published America’s Literary Legends. Visit
Michael’s website www.michaelthomasbarry.com
for more information. His books can be purchased from Amazon through the
following links:
http://www.amazon.com/Literary-Legends-British-Isles-Writers/dp/0764344382/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1426263473&sr=8-3&keywords=michael+thomas+barry
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