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Sophia Peabody Hawthorne
A Life, Volume 2, 1848–1871
Patricia Dunlavy Valenti (Author)
9780807185391
Paperback / softback, published 18 March 2026
364 pages, 17 Halftones, unspecified
2.1 x 22.9 x 15.2 cm, 0.542 kg
"The second volume of Patricia Dunlavy Valenti's elegantly written Sophia Peabody Hawthorne: A Life gives a fresh—often startling, always compelling—view of the endlessly fascinating mother, wife, artist, and political creature." - Diane Jacobs, author of Dear Abigail: The Intimate Lives and Revolutionary Ideas of Abigail Adams and Her Two Remarkable Sisters "This is an engaging and meticulously researched biography of Sophia Peabody Hawthorne, focused on the second half of her life. Sophia's relations with her husband, her children, and other significant people in their lives are thoroughly examined through the use of letters, journals, and other archival materials. Valenti provides astute accounts of Sophia's contributions to her husband's works, and she fills in key background details about the contexts in which they were written and published." - Larry J. Reynolds, author of Devils and Rebels: The Making of Hawthorne's Damned Politics
In Sophia Peabody Hawthorne: A Life, Patricia Dunlavy Valenti presents Nathaniel Hawthorne's spouse on her own terms, situating her remarkable life within its own historical, philosophical, and cultural context, and freeing her from notions that Nathaniel constructed and that his biographers perpetuated. The first of this two-volume work recounts Sophia's accomplishments as one of America's first professional women artists, a transcendentalist thinker, and a prolific travel writer. The second volume explores Sophia's abandonment of her artistic career—at Nathaniel's urging—to adopt the roles of wife and mother, widow and impoverished guardian of her husband's legacy, and, finally, expatriate.