Nathaniel Hawthorne was a descendent of one of the three judges at the Salem witchcraft trial in 1692, where one of the condemned women put a hex on the family. Following college in 1825, Nathaniel returned to pursue a career in writing. He had become close friends with classmates Franklin Pierce and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. His first volume, Twice Told Tales, was published in 1837. In 1850, he published The Scarlet Letter. Moving to Lenox in western Massachusetts, he became a close friend of Herman Melville. There Hawthorne wrote The House of the Seven Gables. In 1852, he wrote a campaign bibliography for Franklin Pierce. Hawthorne was appointed U.S. consul to Liverpool for four years, then for two years in Italy, and another year in England.