It was almost inevitable that Nathaniel Hawthorne would grow up to write fiction about the New England past. Born on July 4, 1804, in Salem, Massachusetts, Hawthorne could trace his family tree on both sides to the Puritans, whose unbending attitudes toward religious conformity were branded on the American, and especially the New England, consciousness. His great-great grandfather, John Hathorne, was one of the three judges at the famous Salem witch trials in 1692. (The family name was spelled 'Hathorne' until the novelist himself added the 'w'.) Hawthorne's father, a sea captain, died in Suriname in 1808; the four-year-old Hawthorne and his family found themselves living on the charity of relatives. The family moved from Salem to Raymond, Maine, when Hawthorne was twelve; he remained there for three years, and became accustomed to a life of solitude. In 1821 he entered Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, graduating in 1825 near the middle of a class that included future president Franklin Pierce (one of Hawthorne's best friends) and the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. ...