Hawthorne, Elizabeth Manning

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HAWTHORNE, Elizabeth Manning

Born 7 March 1802, Salem, Massachusetts; died 1 January 1883, Beverly, Massachusetts

Daughter of Nathaniel and Elizabeth Manning Hawthorne

Except for three and one-half years spent in the remote, wooded area of Raymond, Maine, the older sister of Nathaniel Hawthorne lived all of her eighty-one years in Salem or in Beverly, a small community near Salem. A precocious child, Elizabeth Manning Hawthorne walked and talked when she was nine months old and read Shakespeare when she was twelve years old. She studied under a number of "preceptoresses" in Salem, including Mrs. Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, only until she was about thirteen. She was essentially self-educated.

Hawthorne's letters allow spontaneous unfettered revelation of a many-faceted woman; they record her fervent responses to political events, her perceptive and often acid literary comments, her personal philosophy, her candid self-assessments and whimsical observations, her love affair with the woods. Most of Hawthorne's literary efforts, however, were abortive ones. She wrote poetry in her youth but published only a poem or two in newspapers. She translated Bon Jardinier—for her uncle, a pomologist—and Cervantes' Tales, but neither was ever published. She mentions in her letters her desire to review books for the Atlantic Magazine, but she never got the opportunity. There is ample evidence she would have liked a literary career, but the reality and pathos of her existence are epitomized in her acknowledgment: "I am utterly destitute of the ability to earn."

Hawthorne's major pieces of published writing were unsigned and have been generally unrecognized. When her brother edited the American Magazine of Useful and Entertaining Knowledge (March-August 1836), Hawthorne was his only contributor. Written entirely by the two of them, the six issues contain essays, extracts, and notes from other published material. While it is not always possible to distinguish her contributions from Nathaniel's, much of the magazine's writing reflects attitudes, interests, and expressions typical of Hawthorne: "Nothing is so intolerable as a little wit and a great desire of showing it." Deeply interested in politics and history, she was unswervingly convinced of American superiority. "Alexander Hamilton," her long essay in the May issue, is a eulogistic discussion of Hamilton's early military career and his distinguished contribution to the American Revolution.

The tone and attitudes of much of the writing in American Magazine are repeated in Peter Parley's Universal History on the Basis of Geography (1837). Her brother, originally commissioned by editor Samuel Goodrich to write the history, offered Hawthorne the $100 fee to do the work, and it is probable the writing is entirely hers. Immediately successful, the book went through countless editions, was used in schoolrooms throughout the 19th century, and made its publishers a fortune.

World history, from Eden to America, is narrated in an intimate, first-person manner and a lively, story-telling mode by Peter Parley, staunch Christian and American. Entertainingly and morally instructive, the narrator combines biblical myth, historical events, and geographic description to instruct young minds on the nature of good and evil in the progression of the world.

A prime example of 19th-century American orthodoxy, the history integrates Christian ideology and American chauvinism. Through anecdotes about famous leaders in history and through generalizations, the Peter Parley text molded American minds for more than half a century.

Other Works:

The papers of Elizabeth Manning Hawthorne are in the Hawthorne collections at the Bancroft Library of the University of California at Berkeley, the Beinecke Library at Yale University, the Boston Public Library, the Bowdoin College Library (Brunswick, Maine), the Essex Institute (Salem, Massachusetts), the Huntington Library (San Marino, California), and the New York Public Library.

Bibliography:

Hawthorne, J., Nathaniel Hawthorne and His Wife (1888). Lathrop, R. H., Memories of Hawthorne (1897). Loggins, V., The Hawthornes: The Story of Seven Generations of an American Family (1951).