The son of Nathaniel Hawthorne, Julian received a wide-ranging education from his father at home before entering Harvard University. He left before graduating and moved to Dresden, Germany where he studied engineering. He met May Amelung there in 1870 and they married on their return to America. After spending a year with the Hydrographic Engineering Dept. of Docks of New York, he realized that engineering was not his calling. He submitted his first story, Love and Counter-Love to Harper's Weekly in 1870 and began to write a series of supernatural tales which were published in various periodicals including Lippincott's and Scribner's. In 1873, he published his first novel, Bressant, which achieved commercial success as well as being critically acclaimed. A number of reasonably successful novels followed over the ensuing decade. He became involved in various mining company scams in the early part of the century and was convicted of mail fraud in 1913, for which he spent a year in prison. He nevertheless maintained his innocence. He separated from his wife in 1915 and moved to California where he worked for, among others, the Pasadena Star-News. After the 1920's his output declined. Hawthorne also edited a number of works including various anthologies and Collier's edition of his father's works. His other work includes Idolatry: A Romance (1874), Saxon Studies (1876), Garth (1877), The Laughing Mill (1879), Archibald Malmaison (1879), Ellice Quentin (1885), A Fool of Nature (1886), The Professor's Sister (1888), David Poindexter's Disappearance & Other Tales (1888) and Sarah Was Judith (1920). |