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Hailed by Henry James as "the finest piece of imaginative writing yet put forth in the country," Nathaniel Hawthornes The Scarlet Letter reaches to our nations historical and moral roots for the material of great tragedy. Set in an early New England colony, the novel shows the terrible impact a single, passionate act has on the lives of three members of the community: the defiant Hester Prynne; the fiery, tortured Reverend Dimmesdale; and the obsessed, vengeful Chillingworth. With The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne became the first American novelist to forge from our Puritan heritage a universal classic, a masterful exploration of humanity's unending struggle with sin, guilt and pride.

"The error in 'The Scarlet Letter' proceeded from the divorce of its humor from its pathos--the introduction being as genial as Goldsmith or Lamb, and the story which followed being tragic even to ghastliness."

Edwin Percy Whipple, Graham's Magazine, June 1851

"THE SCARLET LETTER has the charm of unconsciousness; the author did not realize while he worked, that this 'most prolix among tales' was alive with the miraculous vitality of genius. It combines the strength and substance of an oak with the subtle organization of a rose, and is great, not of malice aforethought, but inevitably."

Julian Hawthorne, Atlantic Monthly, April 1886

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