Which author wrote the 1851 novel The House of the Seven Gables?

Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote the 1851 novel The House of the Seven Gables. Published in April 1851, it was Hawthorne’s follow-up to his celebrated novel The Scarlet Letter.

The Gothic story centers on the Pyncheon family and its ancestral home in Salem, Massachusetts. Hawthorne explores inherited guilt, revenge, moral corruption, and eventual atonement, blending realistic New England settings with suggestions of witchcraft and the supernatural. The family’s troubled history echoes Hawthorne’s own connection to Salem and to ancestors involved in the Salem witch trials of 1692.

The title was partly inspired by the Turner-Ingersoll Mansion, a historic house in Salem associated with Hawthorne’s cousin Susanna Ingersoll. The real building had been altered over time, but Hawthorne was fascinated by its earlier form and by the phrase “seven gables.” A common mix-up is confusing this novel with The Scarlet Letter, which Hawthorne published in 1850, or with the actual Salem house that inspired parts of its imagery.