Nathaniel Hawthorne

Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864), author of The Scarlet Letter, wrote a series of dark ‘science’ parables that anticipate the genre’s central anxieties: ‘Rappaccini’s Daughter’, with its poisonous experiment on a human life; ‘The Birth-Mark’, in which a scientist’s pursuit of perfection kills what he loves; ‘Dr. Heidegger’s Experiment’. His probing of hubris and the cost of tampering with nature places him among the genre’s American ancestors.