For nearly a century and a half, Nathaniel Hawthorne's masterpiece has mesmerized readers and critics alike.

One of the greatest of American novels, The Scarlet Letter's  themes of sin, guilt, religious hypocrisy, woven through a story of adultery in the early days of the Massachusetts Colony, are revealed with remarkable psychological penetration and understanding of the human heart.

​ It is considered a masterpiece of American literature and a classic moral study.

Hailed at the time by Henry James as "the finest piece of imaginative writing yet put forth in the country, " Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Scarlet Letter" reaches to our nation's historical and moral roots for the material of great tragedy, and shows the terrible impact a single, passionate act has on the lives of three members of the community: Hester Prynne; the 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.​

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