The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864) was one of America's earliest great writers. Born in Salem, Massachusetts, Hawthorne was a descendent of the Puritans he criticizes in The Scarlet Letter. In fact, one of his ancestors, William Haythorne, persecuted the Quakers for their heterodox beliefs and served as one of the interrogators in the famous Salem witch trials toward the close of the seventeenth century. To read more about Hawthorne, see Hawthorne In Salem or the section devoted to him at the website titled The Wayside, Hawthorne's home. You might also see this short article about Hawthorne.

The novel is set in Puritan Boston in the mid-1640s. The capital of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, Boston was a closed social system in which the group, not the individual, was valued. The Puritans rebelled against the Church of England, which they saw as corrupted and impure. For information about the Puritans and their colony in America, see Religion and the Founding of the American Republic.

A study guide for the novel itself, with helpful resources, has been published by The Glencoe Literature Library.

You may read the entire novel online at Bartleby.