Nathaniel Hawthorne

Nathaniel Hawthorne was born “Nathaniel Hathorne” in 1804 in Salem, Massachusetts. Nathaniel later changed the spelling of his name to distance himself from his ancestor John Hathorne, a judge involved in the Salem witch trials. Hawthorne attended Bowdoin College in 1821 and in 1828 published his first novel, Fanshawe. In the following several years, Hawthorne published multiple short stories, collected in Twice-Told Tales (1837), and in 1850, he published his most famous work, The Scarlet Letter, followed by several other novels. Hawthorne died in 1864, at age 59, and was survived by his wife and their three children.