The Scarlet Letter A Romance

by Hawthorne, Nathaniel; Baym, Nina; Connolly, Thomas E.

• ISBN13: 9780140390193
• ISBN10: 0140390197
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1983-04-28
• Publisher: Penguin Classics

Summary

The familiar characters of Hawthorne's dark tale of pride and guilt in colonial New England are given new and added immediacy in the 24 wood engravings by master illustrator Barry Moser.

Author Biography

Nathaniel Hawthorne was 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 his Twice-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 by The 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.

Nina Baym is the director of the School of Humanities and professor of English at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Thomas E. Connolly (1918–2002) was a literary critic and professor of English at the University of Buffalo, where he served as chair of the UB faculty senate. Connolly’s critical essays appeared widely in scholarly journals, and he wrote and edited several books on the works of James Joyce and Nathaniel Hawthorne.

Table of Contents

Introduction	p. vii
Chronology of Nathaniel Hawthorne's Life and Work	p. xix
Historical Context of The Scarlet Letter	p. xxiii
Author's Preface to the Second Edition	p. 3
The Custom House.--Introductory	p. 5
The Prison-Door	p. 55
The Market-Place	p. 57
The Recognition	p. 69
The Interview	p. 81
Hester at Her Needle	p. 91
Pearl	p. 103
The Governor's Hall	p. 117
The Elf-Child and the Minister	p. 127
The Leech	p. 139
The Leech and His Patient	p. 153
The Interior of a Heart	p. 165
The Minister's Vigil	p. 175
Another View of Hester	p. 189
Hester and the Physician	p. 201
Hester and Pearl	p. 209
A Forest Walk	p. 219
The Pastor and His Parishioner	p. 227
A Flood of Sunshine	p. 239
The Child at the Brook-Side	p. 247
The Minister in a Maze	p. 257
The New England Holiday	p. 271
The Procession	p. 283
The Revelation of the Scarlet Letter	p. 297
Conclusion	p. 309
Nathaniel Hawthorne on The Scarlet Letter	p. 317
Notes	p. 327
Interpretive Notes	p. 343
Critical Excerpts	p. 353
Questions for Discussion	p. 369
Suggestions for the Interested Reader	p. 371
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