Born in Salem, Massachusetts, Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864) is one of America's greatest writers. His classic novels include The Scarlet Letter and The House of the Seven Gables, both in the dark romanticism genre, with moral messages and a Puritan influence. He also wrote short stories and non-fiction. Hawthorne, who spent significant parts of his life in The Berkshires and Concord, Massachusetts, was born with the surname Hathorne. He added the "w" to distance himself from his great-great-grandfather John Hathorne, the unrepentant Salem magistrate and chief interrogator of the accused witches during the Salem witch hysteria of 1692.