Having been found guilty of adultery, Hester Prynne is forced to wear an embroidered scarlet letter "A" as a punishment for her sin. While her vengeful husband embarks on a quest to discover the identity of her lover, she is left to face the consequences of her infidelity and find a place for herself and her illegitimate child in the hostile environment of seventeenth-century Puritan Boston. Nathaniel Hawthorne's tense narrative astonished readers with its unparalleled psychological depth when it first appeared, and the novel now stands as one of America's literary landmarks.
Author Biography
Inspired by the Puritan past of his native New England, Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804 - 64) became a pivotal figure in the history of American literature, notably with his masterpiece, The Scarlet Letter.
