Interesting Literature

Fun facts from the life of the great nineteenth-century American writer, Nathaniel Hawthorne

1. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s great-great-grandfather, John Hathorne, was one of the judges at the Salem witch trials. Nathaniel added the ‘w’ to his family name in an attempt to distance himself from this controversial ancestry. The young Hathorne – later rechristened ‘Hawthorne’ – spent several childhood years living in Salem, Massachusetts, though his mother also lived in Maine as well. (Nathaniel’s father had died when his son was just aged four in the Dutch colony of Suriname.) Alongside Hathorne was one Andrew Elliott, ancestor of the poet T. S. Eliot.

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