1804 Nathaniel Hawthorne is born on July 4. He is the only son of
Nathaniel Hathorne and Elizabeth Manning Hathorne.

1808 Hawthorne's father, a sea captain, dies in Surinam leaving the
family in poverty.

1813-14 Suffers from "mysterious" sickness for fourteen months.

1821-25 Studies at Bowdoin College, Brunswick Maine. Here, two of his classmates, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and Franklin Pierce (later the 14th president of the United States) add a "w" to his last name.

1825-30 Studies the history of New England intensely. Reads widely during his first years of his career as a writer.

1828 Anonymously publishes Fanshawe, a melodramatic romance set in a college town. Later, he burned all the copies he could find.

1830 Published "Sights of a Steeple" anonymously in The Token. His earliest tale was "The Hollow of the Three Hills" published in November in The Salem Gazette.

1839 Hawthorne is engaged to Sophia Peabody.

1839-41 Publishes three children's books: Grandfather's Chair, Famous Old People, and Liberty Tree. Works as a Measurer in the Boston Custom House.

1842 Hawthorne marries Sophia Peabody and moves to Old Manse, Concord, Massachusetts. Some of his neighbors included Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Margaret Fuller.

1846 Mosses from an Old Manse, a collection of stories and sketches with an introductory essay is published.

1846-49 Hawthorne works as a surveyor in the Salem Custom House.

1850 The Scarlet Letter is published. Hawthorne moves to a farm near Lenox, Massachusetts. There he meets Herman Melville.

1851 Publishes The House of Seven Gables, The Snow Image and Other Twice-Told Tales, and A wonder-Book for Girls and Boys.

1853 Publishes Tanglewood Tales.

1853-57 Hawthorne serves as United States Consul in Liverpool, England.

1857-59 Lives in Rome, Florence, and England.

1860 The Marble Faun is published. He returns to the United States. Begins another romance, but dies before it is finished. He leaves four fragments. "Ancestral Footman", "Dr. Grimshawe's Secret", "Septimus Felton", and "The Dolliver Romance."

1863 Our Old Home is published.

1864 Dies May 19 at Plymouth, New Hampshire in the presence of Franklin Pierce. Buried in Sleepy Hollow Cemetary, Concord, Massachusetts.