Accomplishments. Nathaniel Hawthorne specialized in short tales and longer romances. While publishing many short stories and sketches in various periodicals, Hawthorne published one short novel, Fanshawe (1828), and two collections of tales—Twice-Told Tales (1837) and Mosses from an Old Manse (1846)—before publishing the romances for which he is best known: The Scarlet Letter (1850), The House of the Seven Gables (1851), and The Blithedale Romance (1852). He continued to publish collections of his tales, publishing The Snow-Image and Other Twice-Told Tales in 1851, A Wonder-Book for Girls and Boys in 1852, and Tanglewood Tales for Girls and Boys in 1853. He published his last romance, The Marble Faun, in 1860. In addition to his fiction writing Hawthorne published the collection True Stories from History and Biography in 1851 and a political biography of his college friend and presidential hopeful, Franklin Pierce, in 1852.

Earning a Living. An 1825 graduate of Bowdoin College, Hawthorne struggled with...