Hawthorne and His Circle

Julian Hawthorne was the son of famous American author Nathaniel Hawthorne, and while he wasn't as critically acclaimed as his father, Julian also wrote several works of fiction and histories. This is a memoir of sorts written about Nathaniel and his Transcendentalist friends, including the likes of Emerson and Thoreau. Nathaniel Hawthorne needs no formal introduction for any American who took a literature course in high school. It's impossible to avoid reading one of Hawthorne's classics, particularly The Scarlet Letter and The House of the Seven Gables. Hawthorne could trace his family roots back to the Puritans of the 17th century colonies, and he was clearly qualified to produce some of America's greatest historical fiction. In fact, people have long believed he changed the spelling of his last name to avoid association with an ancestor who had been involved in the Salem Witch trials, and his inclinations were on display with the way he portrayed Puritan Massachusetts in The Scarlet Letter. Given the fact that his home was Salem and he was a Transcendentalist, it's no surprise that much of Hawthorne's writing centers on New England, and his works were imbued with moral allegories that often featured the Puritans. With themes like evil, sin, and humanity, Hawthorne created unusually deep and complex characters in an era where it was rare to flesh out characters' psyches. Most Americans are roughly familiar with some of Hawthorne's life and work, but few are truly aware of just how prodigious Hawthorne was. In addition to his classic novels, Hawthorne wrote nearly 100 short stories, including classics like The Birthmark, and he rubbed elbows with men like Ralph Waldo Emerson, President Franklin Pierce, and other writers like Herman Melville.