The Self-Reliant Entrepreneur

April

Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864)

To do nothing is the way to be nothing.

—Nathaniel Hawthorne

Source: Wikimedia

Born in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1804, Nathaniel Hawthorne was the only child of sea captain Nathaniel Sr. and Elizabeth Clark Hawthorne. His young life was shaped by a leg injury at age nine. This kept him inside for nearly two years, and it was during this time that he became deeply interested in reading and literature.

In 1821, he attended Bowdoin College. Upon graduation, he returned to Salem and worked various jobs as he wrote his first novel. Self-published in 1828, Fanshawe was not a success. In fact, later in life Hawthorne recalled the book and burned the remaining copies of it.

That first experience did not stop him from continuing to write, though, and during the 1830s he published several other works. He met Sophia Amelia Peabody in 1837, the woman he would later marry.

It was Peabody who introduced Hawthorne to the transcendentalist movement. Hawthorne became more involved throughout the 1840s, briefly joining Brook Farm, a commune centered around the ideals of the movement. He then moved to Concord in 1842.

In Concord, Hawthorne became friends with leading transcendentalists like Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Margaret Fuller, and Amos Bronson Alcott.

In 1846, he returned to Salem. In 1850, he published The Scarlet Letter, which ...