A CHRONOLOGY OF
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE

1804	Born on 4 July in Salem, Massachusetts, to Nathaniel and Elizabeth Manning Hathorne (the younger Nathaniel would later add the ‘w’ to the family name).
1808	Father, a ship’s captain, dies of yellow fever in Surinam. Nathaniel grows up in Salem and, briefly, in Maine.
1821–5	Attends Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Maine. His fellow students include Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, the future poet, and Franklin Pierce, who would serve as President of the United States from 1853 to 1857.
1825	Following graduation, returns to family’s house in Salem, where he devotes himself to writing fiction.
1828	Publishes novel, Fanshawe, anonymously and at his own expense.
1830	First published stories appear in Salem Gazette. Continues to publish tales and sketches in periodicals for next 20 years.
1836	Brief career as editor of Boston’s American Magazine of Useful and Entertaining Knowledge, which fails after two issues.
1837	Publishes first collection of stories, Twice-Told Tales. Meets Sophia Peabody.
1839–40	Serves as Measurer in Boston Custom House.
1840–2	Publishes four volumes of history for children: Grandfather’s Chair, Famous Old People, The Liberty Tree, and Biographical Stories for Children.
1841	Joins Brook Farm, a Utopian community in West Rox-bury, Mass.
1842	Publishes second, enlarged edition of Twice-Told Tales. Marries Sophia Peabody in July. They move into the Old Manse, in Concord, Mass., where their neighbours include Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau.
1844	Birth of daughter, Una.
1845	Hawthornes move into his family’s house in Salem.
1846	Begins appointment as Surveyor at Salem Custom House. Publishes a new collection, Mosses from an Old Manse. Birth of son, Julian.
1849	Removed from Custom House by new Whig administration. Mother dies. Hawthorne begins writing The Scarlet Letter.
1850	Publishes The Scarlet Letter. Hawthornes move to Lenox, in western Massachusetts. Hawthorne begins writing The House of the Seven Gables. Meets Herman Melville, who lives nearby in Pittsfield.
1851	Publishes The House of the Seven Gables, a third edition of Twice-Told Tales, A Wonder Book for Girls and Boys, and another collection, The Snow-Image, and Other Twice-Told Tales. Birth of daughter, Rose.
1852	Hawthornes move to West Newton, Mass., near Boston. Hawthorne publishes The Blithedale Romance and The Life of Franklin Pierce, a campaign biography of the presidential candidate.
1853	Appointed by Pierce as American Consul at Liverpool; Hawthornes move to England.
1854	Publishes revised edition of Mosses from an Old Manse.
1857	Resigns consulship. Begins work on a novel based on his English experiences, a work he will never complete.
1858–9	Travels in France and Italy. Begins The Marble Faun in Florence. Returns to England.
1860	Publishes The Marble Faun—called The Transformation in England. Returns to America to live in Concord, Mass., at ‘The Wayside’.
1860–4	Plans and works on various projects for novels; completes none of them.
1863	Publishes Our Old Home, collection of essays on English life.
1864	Dies in New Hampshire on 19 May, while travelling with Franklin Pierce.