The Cambridge Introduction Nathaniel Hawthorne

Hawthorne’s sea-captain father died at sea when he was only four, and he
was raised by his mother and her family, the Mannings. When his mother
moved to Raymond,Maine, in 1819, he stayed in Salem with his uncle’s family
and did not see her for two years. He entered Bowdoin College in Brunswick,
Maine, in the fall of 1821 at the age of seventeen. He was not a stellar student.
Shortly after his matriculation, he wrote his uncle William that the “Laws of
the College are not at all too strict, and I do not have to study near so hard
as I did in Salem” (15: 155). Hawthorne did find some rules “repugnant” –
especially those involving religion. He resented having to “get up at sunrise
every morning to attend prayers,” although he noted that the students “make
it a custom” to break that law “twice a week.” “But worst of all,” he told his
sister Louisa, “is to be compelled to go to meeting every Sunday, and to hear a
red hot Calvinist Sermon from the President, or some other dealer in fire and
brimstone” (15: 159). Hawthorne found other rules less strict, but they did
catch up with him. In May 1822, he had to write his mother that he had been
caught playing cards and had been fined fifty cents (15: 171). Since some of
the card players were suspended, Hawthorne appears to have gotten off lightly,
the college president apparently believing, Hawthorne later noted, that he had
been led “away by the wicked ones.” In this, Hawthorne boasted to Louisa,
“he is greatly mistaken. I was full as willing to play

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