Sophia Peabody Hawthorne

Patricia Dunlavy Valenti is professor emerita of English at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke. An award-winning teacher who held visiting professorships at the U.S. Military Academy and the U.S. Air Force Academy, she is the author of five books and numerous articles on American literature and biography.

"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