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Hawthorne in Concord

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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.

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.

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.

Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864) and his wife Sophia Peabody Hawthorne spent a total of just eight years of married life in Concord, Massachusetts. Those years were spread out over three decades. Yet the couple's extended familial and social circles included many names known to Concordians then and to us today: the Emersons, Alcotts, Stowes and Peabodys; Henry David Thoreau, Margaret Fuller, Horace Mann, Horace Greeley, Ellery Channing, William Dean Howells, Samuel Hoar, and Nathan Appleton; publishers James Fields and William Ticknor; and Nathaniel's college friends, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Franklin Pierce. The Hawthornes were in the thick of the 19th-century New England literary life that had Concord at its very center. Their residency can thus be used as a focal point to study the time and its place in history.

While this book attempts to do just that, it delves into more lives than just the Hawthornes (as noted above) and travels as far away as Italy. It follows tangents to their end but always eventually returns to Nathaniel and Sophia and to their two Concord homes, the Old Manse and the Wayside. The details of the pair's devotion and amazing romance may surprise those readers who remember only the dark themes of short stories read in high school English class. It's difficult to fathom that the same pen that wrote "Young Goodman Brown" and "The Minister's Black Veil" also wrote adoring love letters to his Dove.

I found the writing style a bit unnerving to follow, as the narrative overlaps itself and doesn't always follow strict chronological order. Nevertheless, this book should prove of interest to anyone who enjoys the transcendental period of American literature and history. For a full biography of Hawthorne, look elsewhere.

Hawthorne In Concord is no light reading biographical sketch, but a substantial, informative, and superbly presented in-depth account of the great American man of letters, Nathaniel Hawthorne, considering both his literary contribution and his influence on Concord's community of philosophers, poets, reformers and intellectuals as a whole. Equally intriguing, Hawthorne In Concord places Hawthorne's experiences within his circle of most notable companions, from Emerson and Thoreau to Mann and the Alcotts, making Hawthorne In Concord a powerful survey of not just one man, but his entire circle.

This book was in an excellent condition, just as I needed. It was delivered promptly and I would buy again from this seller in a minute.

The book captures the spirit and personality of Nathaniel Hawthorne. The writing evokes the time and period Hawthorne lived in and connects Hawthorne with other writers and public figures of the time. It is especially interesting to note how Hawthorne interacted with Emerson, Thoreau, and Franklin Pierce. Extensively researched and well written.

The book is at once that of a love story between Nathaniel and Sophia Hawthorne and a social/intellectual history of New England in general and Concord, Ma in particular. It basically places a portrait of the Hawthorne's marriage at the forefront of a broader picture of the developments and issues that were occurring contemporaneous to their relationship. Consequently, one is treated to a very touching story of two intelligent and creative people deeply in love, while also being exposed to the salient issues that concerned them and the intelligentsia of the day (Emerson, Thoreau, Longfellow, Fuller. Alcott). In the end, the book is instructive as to the Hawthornes and also with regard to the manner that New England and the nation were developing and changing. Moreover, it is a beautifully written work...at times the proses reads like poetry.

Like another reviewer, the book made such an impression on me that I made a special trip to Concord to see the Old Manse, Emerson's home and the Alcott house. I wasn't disappointed with the trip---nor will anyone be disappointed with this truly wonderful work.

There was some good information hidden in there and I did learn something from it. But the writing was extremely boring and the chronology was off. I would have preferred it in chronological order. I wish the author had written it in modern language instead of whatever he was trying to do.