Wineapple, Brenda. Hawthorne, a life.

WINEAPPLE, Brenda. Hawthorne, a life. Random House, 509p. illus. notes. bibliog. index. c2003. 0-8129-7291-0. $16.95. SA

Brenda Wineapple has written the most detailed and accessible life of Nathaniel Hawthorne to date. Published to wide critical praise, Hawthorne begins with the fate of the author's three children. The first-born daughter, Una, died mysteriously at the age of 33. Rose, the youngest, suffered a terrible marriage, feuded with her siblings, and lost her only child to diphtheria. Julian, the only son, was sentenced to a year and a day in a federal prison in 1912, guilty of defrauding the public, a charge he always denied. Hawthorne's own life was similarly fraught with unhappiness and frustration. Born in Salem to one of the town's leading families, Nathaniel struggled to find a career and financial success. A recluse, he didn't marry until he was 38. He and his wife Sophia suffered from poverty that was from time to time lessened by Franklin Pierce and other school friends. The Hawthornes moved frequently, and at one point they were evicted for non-payment of rent.

Wineapple does an excellent job of putting Hawthorne's literary works into the context of his life and of analyzing them. She also presents his attitude toward slavery, an American tragedy he usually ignored. He said after John Brown's attack on Harpers Ferry in 1859 "nobody was ever more justly hanged." Sophia Hawthorne thought that "the inferior race were designed to serve the superior--But not as slaves!" Hawthorne was 57 when Fort Sumter was fired on in 1861. He went to Washington, D.C. as a tourist to see the war, and then wrote an antiwar piece for the Atlantic. He died in 1864 at the age of 59. About 50 illustrations accompany the vivid text. Janet Julian, Grafton, MA