Nathaniel Hawthorne

Biographical Stories Nathaniel Hawthorne

Biographical Stories is a collection short biographical tales of historical figures including Queen Christina, Benjamin Franklin, Oliver Cromwell, Samuel Johnson, Sir Isaac Newton and Benjamin West. Like his previous three children's books (Grandfather's Chair, Famous Old People, and Liberty Tree), Biographical Stories features an older, authoritative male telling stories about historical figures to children who are family members. In Biographical Stories, the narrator is Mr. Temple, a father who over nine chapters relates six accounts of the childhoods of famous people to his young son Edward. The stories that Mr. Temple tells are meant to distract and occupy Edward who suffers from an eye disorder that keeps him confined, his eyes bandaged, in a ...