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The Scarlet Letter
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The Scarlet Letter Mass market paperbound - 2009

by Hawthorne, Nathaniel

  • Used

Tremendously moving and rich in psychological insight, this tragic novel of sin and redemption addresses America's Puritan past. Depicting the struggle between mind and heart, Hawthorne has fashioned a masterpiece of American fiction. Revised reissue.

Description

Penguin Publishing Group. Used - Good. Used book that is in clean, average condition without any missing pages.
Used - Good
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Details

  • Title The Scarlet Letter
  • Author Hawthorne, Nathaniel
  • Binding Mass Market Paperbound
  • Edition [ Edition: first
  • Condition Used - Good
  • Pages 288
  • Volumes 1
  • Language ENG
  • Publisher Penguin Publishing Group
  • Date 2009-08-04
  • Features Price on Product - Canadian, Table of Contents
  • Bookseller's Inventory # GRP102242162
  • ISBN 9780451531353 / 0451531353
  • Weight 0.31 lbs (0.14 kg)
  • Dimensions 6.7 x 4.22 x 0.78 in (17.02 x 10.72 x 1.98 cm)
  • Ages 18 to UP years
  • Grade levels 13 - UP
  • Reading level 410
  • Themes
    • Cultural Region: New England
    • Geographic Orientation: Massachusetts
  • Library of Congress subjects Historical fiction, Psychological fiction
  • Library of Congress Catalog Number 2010277296
  • Dewey Decimal Code FIC

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About this book

The Scarlet Letter: A Romance (1850) is considered the American author Nathaniel Hawthorne's 'masterwork.' A work of historical fiction set in the Massachusetts Bay Colony during the Puritan settlement of 1642-1949 itells the story of Hester Prynne, who after having a child as a result of an extra-marital affair attempts to live a life of repentance and dignity although she is marked by having to wear a Scarlett A on her person. Throughout the novel, Hawthorne explores themes of legalism, sin, and guilt.

The Scarlett Letter was one of the first mass-produced novels in the United States, prior printing of books generally done by hand. The 2,500 copies first printed sold out in days, and the mass-production of books opened up conversation about books and authors to a wider-audience on a national level. The first edition of The Scarlet Letter sold out in ten days and “made Hawthorne’s fame, changed his fortune and gave to our literature its first symbolic novel a year before the appearance of Melville’s Moby-Dick” (Bradley). Although an instant best-seller, the books sales over fourteen years only brought the author $1500.

Summary

A passionate young woman, her cowardly lover, and her aging, vengeful husband 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 tragic novel of sin and redemption addresses our Puritan past. Depicting the struggle between mind and heart, Hawthorne fashioned a masterpiece of American fiction.

From the publisher

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.
Brenda Wineapple authored Sister Brother: Gertrude and Leo Stein and Genet: A Biography of Janet Flanner and is currently at work on a biography of Nathaniel Hawthorne.  She is Washington Irving Professor of Modern Literary and Historical Studies at Union College and has appeared on C-Span’s American Writers series.

First Edition Identification

First edition published by Ticknor, Reeds and Fields, in Boston 1850. Main first edition marker is "reduplicate" instead of "repudiate" on page 21 Four page publisher's adverts at front dated March 1, 1850 and preceding the free end paper. The brown T-cloth favored by Ticknor & Fields is famous for becoming brittle with age, and cracking or fraying at the spine tips. First editions can run upwards of $20,000.

The second edition adds a preface and has a Metcalf imprint on verso of title-page. The third printing has the same preface but has a Hobart & Robbins imprint on verso of title-page.

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About the author

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.

Brenda Wineapple was formerly the Washington Irving Professor of Modern Literary and Historical Studies at Union College and now teaches in the MFA programs at Columbia University and The New School. Her books include White Heat: The Friendship of Emily Dickinson and Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Hawthorne: A Life (winner of the Ambassador Award of the English-Speaking Union for Best Biography of 2003), Sister Brother: Gertrude & Leo Stein, and Gent: A Biography of Janet Flanner.

Regina Barreca, a professor of English and Feminist Theory at the Unniversity of Connecticut, is the editor of the influential journal LIT: Literature, Interpretation, Theory. Among her many books are They Used to Call Me Snow White...But I Drifted, a widely acclaimed study of women's humor, and Perfect Husbands (& Other Fairy Tales). She is also the editor of the Penguin Book of Women's Humor.

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