Nathaniel HAWTHORNE (1804-1864), American novelist and short story writer, born at Salem, Massachusetts. He was a descendant of Major William Hathorne, one of the Puritan settlers in America, the "grave, bearded, sable-cloaked and steeple-crowned progenitor" whose portrait is drawn in the introductory chapter of "The Scarlet Letter": he was remembered for his persecution of the Quakers, as his son, John Hawthorne, also a magistrate, was remembered for his persecution of the so-called Witches of Salem. Hawthorne spent a solitary childhood with his mother, a widowed recluse, during which he read widely; he was educated at Bowdoin College, Brunswick (with Longfellow), then returned to Salem, where he began to write stories and sketches and published a novel, "Fanshawe" (1828), at his own expense.
Hawthorne has long been recognized as one of the greatest of American writers, a moralist and allegorist much preoccupied with the mystery of sin, the paradox of its occasionally regenerative power, and the compensation for unmerited suffering and crime.