William Hathorne (the writer added the
w as a young man) came to New England with John Winthrop in 1630. Judge John Hathorne, his son, was an unrepentant burner of witches during the notorious Salem witch trials (1692); and Nathaniel's paternal grandfather, Daniel Hathorne, inspired a patriotic ballad during the American Revolution by his valor and courage as a privateer. These ancestors were the writer's strongest links to the past, and his stories and novels turn again and again to the periods their lives touched. Unlike any American writer of short fiction who came before him, Hawthorne was able to link his personal sense of the past with the actual history of his region, as throughout his work he simultaneously plumbed the most private aspects of his own psyche while exploring the shared myths of his community.
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