Literary Career and Influences Hawthorne graduated from Bowdoin College in 1825, alongside Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Franklin Pierce, and others. The next decade was spent reading literature and developing his own art. He published his first work, Fanshawe, anonymously in 1828, a novel whose authorship was not attributed to him until after his death (Meyer 399). Upon marrying Sophia Peabody in 1842, Hawthorne moved to the Old Manse in Concord, MA, an event which proved to have a considerable influence on his writing. At the Old Manse, he was surrounded by a literary community including Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, William Ellery Channing, and Amos Bronson Alcott, among others. Two short story collections were created during this time: the second collection of Twice-told Tales, and Mosses from an Old Manse. According to Meyer, the early 1850s were the time when Hawthorne was "at the height of his creativity and productivity" (400). Indeed, the sheer number of works published by him between 1850 and 1853 are evidence enough to support this statement; The Scarlet Letter (1850), The House of the Seven Gables (1851), The Snow-Image (1851), The Blithedale Romance (1852), and The Life of Franklin Pierce (1852) are only a few. Hawthorne moved around with his family for a while after the Old Manse, being appointed to a job in Liverpool and subsequently touring Europe for a few years, but eventually moved back. In 1860, he published his last completed work, The Marble Faun. He died on May 19, 1864, while traveling through Plymouth, NH, with Franklin Pierce (Meyer 400). |
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