The Scarlet Letter [Paperback]

This tragic novel of sin and redemption is Hawthorne's masterpiece of American fiction.

An ardent young woman, her cowardly lover, and her aging vengeful husband—these are the central characters in this stark drama of the conflict between passion and convention in the harsh world of seventeenth-century Boston. Tremendously moving and rich in psychological insight, this dramatic depiction of the struggle between mind and heart illuminates Hawthorne's concern with our Puritan past and its influence on American life.

With an Introduction by Brenda Wineapple
and an Afterword by Regina Barreca

This edition includes an early Hawthorne story that contains the germ ofThe Scarlet Letter."[Nathaniel Hawthorne] recaptured, for his New England, the essence of Greek tragedy." --Malcolm CowleyNathaniel Hawthornewas born on July 4, 1804, in Salem, Massachusetts, the son and grandson of proud New England seafarers. He lived in genteel poverty with his widowed mother and two young sisters in a house filled with Puritan ideals and family pride in a prosperous past. His boyhood was, in most respects, pleasant and normal. In 1825 he was graduated from Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Maine, and he returned to Salem determined to become a writer of short stories. For the next twelve years he was plagued with unhappiness and self-doubts as he struggled to master his craft. He finally secured some small measure of success with the publication of hisTwice-Told Tales(1837). His marriage to Sophia Peabody in 1842 was a happy one.The Scarlet Letter(1850), which brought him immediate recognition, was followed byThe House of the Seven Gables(1851). After serving four years as the American Consul in Liverpool, England, he traveled in Italy; he returned home to Massachusetts in 1860. Depressed, weary of writing, and failing in health, he died on May 19, 1864, at Plymouth, New Hampshire.

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