books & manuscripts & writings
Franklin Pierce was the 14th President of the United States of America (1853-57).
Pierce entered political life in New Hampshire as a Democrat, serving in the state legislature, the U.S. House of Representatives, and the Senate. Pierce saw the abolitionist movement (which sought to eliminate slavery in the country) as a fundamental threat to the unity of the nation, and alienated anti-slavery groups by signing the Kansas-Nebraska Act and enacting the Fugitive Slave Act.
The results of his presidency were generally so poor that Democrats refused to allow Pierce to run again. Years later he died in obscurity, accused of betraying the nation and disgraced. Historians and scholars generally rate Pierce as one of the worst U.S. presidents.
Nathaniel Hawthorne is an American writer and author.
Hawthorne is a recognized short story writer and a master of allegorical and symbolic narrative. One of the first fiction writers in American literature, he is best known for his works The Scarlet Letter (1850) and The House of Seven Gables (1851). Hawthorne's artistic works are considered part of the American Romantic movement and, in particular, of so-called dark Romanticism, a popular mid-19th-century fascination with the irrational, the demonic, and the grotesque.
Thomas Aquinas (Italian: Tommaso d'Aquino, also called Aquinas, alias Doctor Angelicus) was an Italian poet and theologian, philosopher, and major medieval scholastic.
Thomas Aquinas is one of the most important theologians in the history of Western civilization, given the extent of his influence on the development of Roman Catholic theology since the fourteenth century. As a theologian, in his two masterpieces, Summa theologiae and Summa contra gentiles, he created the classical systematization of Latin theology, and as a poet, he wrote some of the most serious and beautiful Eucharistic hymns in the church liturgy. Thomas Aquinas is recognized by the Roman Catholic Church as the foremost Western philosopher and theologian and canonized as a saint.
Nathaniel Hawthorne is an American writer and author.
Hawthorne is a recognized short story writer and a master of allegorical and symbolic narrative. One of the first fiction writers in American literature, he is best known for his works The Scarlet Letter (1850) and The House of Seven Gables (1851). Hawthorne's artistic works are considered part of the American Romantic movement and, in particular, of so-called dark Romanticism, a popular mid-19th-century fascination with the irrational, the demonic, and the grotesque.
Sophia Amelia Hawthorne, née Peabody was an American artist and illustrator and writer.
Sophia Peabody is the wife of writer Nathaniel Hawthorne. Before her marriage, she was already an accomplished artist; during her life she also published articles, her diaries, and some of Nathaniel's notebooks, which she edited and published after his death.