Fiction · 1850
The Scarlet Letter
In seventeenth-century Boston, Hester Prynne is condemned to wear a scarlet “A” for adultery and refuses to name the father of her child. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s romance, published in 1850, follows her, her daughter Pearl, the minister Arthur Dimmesdale and the physician Roger Chillingworth over seven years of concealment and revelation.
Prefaced by “The Custom-House”, the author’s account of his own years as a surveyor in Salem, the book is the founding novel of American literature’s argument with its Puritan past.
This Bibliomancer edition presents the complete text, with Hawthorne’s preface to the second edition and “The Custom-House” standing before the twenty-four chapters. It is set without the illustrations of the 1878 edition from which the text descends.
Contents
- Preface to the Second Edition
- Introductory to “The Scarlet Letter.”
- I — The Prison-Door
- II — The Market-Place
- III — The Recognition
- IV — The Interview
- V — Hester at Her Needle
- VI — Pearl
- VII — The Governor’s Hall
- VIII — The Elf-Child and the Minister
- IX — The Leech
- X — The Leech and His Patient
- XI — The Interior of a Heart
- XII — The Minister’s Vigil
- XIII — Another View of Hester
- XIV — Hester and the Physician
- XV — Hester and Pearl
- XVI — A Forest Walk
- XVII — The Pastor and His Parishioner
- XVIII — A Flood of Sunshine
- XIX — The Child at the Brook-Side
- XX — The Minister in a Maze
- XXI — The New England Holiday
- XXII — The Procession
- XXIII — The Revelation of the Scarlet Letter
- XXIV — Conclusion
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Subjects
- Revenge — Fiction
- Psychological fiction
- Triangles (Interpersonal relations) — Fiction
- Historical fiction
- Married women — Fiction
- Adultery — Fiction
- Clergy — Fiction
- Illegitimate children — Fiction
- Women immigrants — Fiction
- Puritans — Fiction
- Boston (Mass.) — History — Colonial period, ca. 1600-1775 — Fiction
About this edition
The text is free of copyright. This edition was prepared from an authoritative digitisation, processed by Bibliomancer under its own review protocol; every automated correction is recorded in its transformation log. Rights assessed for CA, EU, GB, US.
Part of American Literature.
Source mind
About the author
1804–1864 · Victorian
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864) was born in Salem, Massachusetts, a descendant of a judge at the Salem witch trials. After Bowdoin College he wrote tales for a dozen years in near-seclusion (Twice-Told Tales, 1837), worked in the Boston and Salem custom houses, and lived briefly at Brook Farm. The Scarlet Letter (1850) made his name; The House of the Seven Gables (1851), The Blithedale Romance (1852) and The Marble Faun (1860) followed. He served as American consul at Liverpool from 1853 to 1857.
Adjacent records
