Hawthorne in Concord [Hardcover]

Philip Mcfarland (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 13, 2004

With Hawthorne in Concord, Philip McFarland presents an appreciative portrait that illuminates the periods Hawthorne lived in the village of Concord, Massachusetts, capturing the flavor and essence of his life. In 1842 Hawthorne, the author of Twice-Told Tales, escorts his beloved new wife, Sophia, to their first home, the Old Manse. In love with Concord and enriched by friendships with Thoreau and Emerson, this becomes an idyllic time for him. But ultimately, unable to make enough money from his writing, he returns ingloriously to his mother's home in Salem. In 1852, Hawthorne returns to Concord, now the renowned novelist of both The Scarlet Letter (1850) and The House of the Seven Gables (1851). Eager to begin writing at the scene of his earlier happiness, he instead completes a biography of his college friend, Franklin Pierce, who is running for president. When Pierce wins, Hawthorne is appointed to the lucrative post of consul in Liverpool. Coming home in 1860, he finds America on the verge of civil war. Emerson welcomes Hawthorne with a gala strawberry party. Concord is now a hive of abolitionists, but Hawthorne withdraws due to his ambiguous views on the war and his deteriorating health.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In this pleasing biography, seasoned American history writer McFarland (The Brave Bostonians) focuses on two elements that defined New England as the center of America's 19th-century literary world: the village of Concord, Mass. (a center for luminaries like Ralph Waldo Emerson and Bronson Alcott), and the blue-eyed "recluse" able to see "evil in every human heart," Nathaniel Hawthorne. McFarland focuses on the people and ideas that shaped the era as it moved from early industrialization to the turmoil of the Civil War. His short chapters lend themselves to portraits, of politicians Henry Clay and James Knox Polk, and thinkers Horace Mann and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, among others. Aspects of Hawthorne's everyday life are stressed, such as his constant money concerns, which in the 1840s sent him, with his wife and daughter, back to live with his mother and sister, and 20 years later still left him thinking, "I wonder how people manage to live economically." The physical precariousness of 19th-century life is also revealed, in the many examples of diseases and drownings within Hawthorne's family and community. The writer's meaningful friendships are well drawn, particularly with his college chum and future president, Franklin Pierce, to whom he displayed his loyalty by writing a campaign biography. In the end, by depicting his subject's three sojourns in Concord, McFarland illuminates Hawthorne's art and the intellectual ferment originating in that small, bucolic town.
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From Booklist

*Starred Review* Unlike the usual biography focused rigorously on its subject, McFarland's partial life of Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-64) depicts its subject in relation to Concord, Massachusetts, his hometown from his marriage in 1842 onward. He wasn't always resident in the town where the Revolutionary War began--he was away when he died. But Concord, with its literary citizens including Emerson, Thoreau, and the Alcotts, was the home he returned to after the seven-years (1845-52) during which The Scarlet Letter and The House of the Seven Gables finally brought him financial success, and again after seven further years (1853-60) as U.S. consul in Liverpool and, thereafter, an American abroad, principally in Italy. He was highly reclusive and taciturn but not saturnine or misanthropic. His children remembered him as a playful father; his wife, friends, and even brief acquaintances treasured having known him. By contrast with his literary peers--contrasts McFarland points up in incisive recountings of several of their foibles--Hawthorne was uncranky; lovable; and, though his dearest friend was Franklin Pierce, the fourteenth president, essentially apolitical. It would be easy to characterize him as a cool conservative among flaming liberals. McFarland does nothing so crude. Instead, he enters Hawthorne's milieu (his prose even echoes Hawthorne's textures, cadences, and grammar) and illumines it with intelligence and affection. Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Product Details

• Hardcover: 400 pages
• Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press (May 13, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0802117767
• ISBN-13: 978-0802117762
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.4 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,166,718 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Hawthorne in Concord is a beautifully written biography of the great American author, March 27, 2008

By 

C. M Mills "Michael Mills" (Knoxville Tennessee) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Hawthorne in Concord (Paperback)

Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864) was born to a seafaring captain and his wife in Salem, Mass. Hawthorne was a graduate of Bowdoin College in Maine were he became friendly with future president Franklin Pierce. Following graduation the reclusive Hawthorne spent several years penning short stories for magazines. He was nearly financially bereft as a result of this effort but continued to write. During this long period he lived with his mother and sisters.
As he neared 40 Hawthorne wed Sophia Peabody one of the daughters of the famous Peabody family of New England Transcendentalists. Mary Peabody would wed famed educational reformer Horace Mann. The Hawthornes began an idyllic time as newlyweds in the Old Manse owned by the family of Ralph Waldon Emerson. Hawthorne became friendly with the transcendalists gurus of Concord. Emerson, Thoreau, Lowell, Margaret Fuller, the Alcott family and Longfellow. He also knew Harriet Beecher Stowe. Hawthorne won fame as the author of such American classics as "The Scarlet Letter,"; "The House of Seven Gables,"; "The Blithedale Romance,"; (based on the time he spent on a utopian farm prior to his marriage to Sophia:) and great short stories.
Hawthorne and Sophie had three children: Una who became ill in Rome dying in her early 30s; Julian a prolific author who fell afoul of the law in his later years and Rose who has been sainted by the Roman Catholic Church for her work among the dying. The Hawthornes had a deep love throughout their happy marriage.
Hawthorne barely scraped by on his writing. He was awarded patronage jobs by the Democratic party when he served as a custom inspector in Salem and later as US Consul in Liverpool during the administration of his old friend Franklin Pierce. The Hawthorne family also lived in Italy and enjoyed life in Europe. I was amazed that McFarland did not give one sentence to the important friendship existing between Herman Melville and Hawthorne. Melville dedicated "Moby Dick" to Hawthorne.
Hawthorne was a quiet, handsome and solitary individual. Hawthorne enjoyed long walks and times of meditation in the beautiful New England woods. McFarland is good at discussing these moments in the life of his subject. He and Sophie enjoyed reading, music and quiet country life.
Due to his friendship with the doughface Pierce he was scorned by many of his friends for being too soft on chattel slavery. Hawthrone was, however, no friend of slavery. He prefered that the southern states leave the nation if they desired to do so. Hawthorne met Abraham Lincoln and was impressed with him.
McFarland also devotes a considerable number of pages in his book to discussing the other famous folks who lived in Concord. Concord was a small village which was the site of the New England revival in American literature and a hotbed of the transcendental movement in America.
This book will not teach you very much about the novels of Hawthorne. The reader desiring that information should turn to the longer, more scholarly and less adulatory biography by scholar Brenda Wineapple. The McFarland book is a pleasant reading experience transporting the reader back to a distant time of America in the 1840s through the Civil War era.
The book would be a fine gift for a high school student being introduced to the life and work of our first pyschological novelist who explored sin and the Puritan past with genius and insight.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Very enjoyable literary biography, June 16, 2005

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Extollager (Mayville, ND United States) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Hawthorne in Concord (Hardcover)

Other reviewers have told what this book is about. I will add that the author is to be commended for eschewing the bloated pagecount that has become typical of literary biographies. His book leaves me at the same time well satisfied and interested in learning more - - for example, about Rose Hawthorne.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Accessible and insightful, September 11, 2008

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Dark Romantic (Near Boston, MA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Hawthorne in Concord (Paperback)

McFarland's biography of Hawthorne does focus on his Concord years in particular, but he does not skim past his years in Salem or abroad. This is a full-length portrait of Hawthorne that is more than just readable: it is delectable and hard to put down. It gives Hawthorne a three-dimensionality, placing him within a context as springing from New England roots and being within a developing United States in the 19th century. The book also gives an ample understanding of Hawthorne's relationships with some of his close and important friends (Franklin Pierce in particular, but also Longfellow and others) and even more ancillary figures with whom he interacted (such as Margaret Fuller and Edgar Poe).

The book doesn't give the longest treatment to Hawthorne's writings as compared with other biographies out there. Instead, McFarland gives us a portrait of Hawthorne, the man behind the writing. Specifically, we meet a family man, a hard-worker, a cripplingly-shy observer of the world, and a good husband. This is a great start to any amateur scholar of Hawthorne or anyone who has appreciated his works and wants to meet the author himself.