Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Henry Walcott Boynton, Reader's History of American Literature

The events of his life may be briefly given. He was born in Salem, July 4, 1804, of an old Salem family. One of his ancestors was a judge in some of the famous witch trials, and had, according to tradition, brought a curse upon his descendants by his severity. Born of such stock, and bred in such surroundings, it is no wonder that Hawthorne became early the romantic interpreter of that sombre code and mode of living which we call Puritanism. His boyhood was given more to general reading. than to study. He graduated from Bowdoin, with Longfellow, in 1825, and spent twelve quiet years at Salem writing and rewriting; publishing little, and that through the most inconspicuous channels: becoming, in short, as he said, “the obscurest man of letters in America.” Not until the publication of Twice-told tales (1837) did he obtain recognition. A brief residence in the Brook Farm community gave him the materials for The Blithedale romance. In 1841 he was married, and settled in the Old Manse at Concord, which, some years later, he made