The Scarlet Letter

The Scarlet Letter
Nathaniel Hawthorne





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EDITOR’S NOTE
Nathaniel Hawthorne was already a man of forty-six, and a tale writer of some twenty-four years standing, when The Scarlet Letter appeared. He was born at Salem, Mass, on July 4th, 1804, son of a sea-captain. He led there ashy and rather sombre life of few artistic encouragements, yet not wholly uncongenial, his moody, intensely meditative temperament being considered. Its colours and shadows are marvelously reflected in his
‘Twice-Told Tales and other short stories, the product of his first literary period. Even his college days at Bowdoin did not quite breakthrough his acquired and inherited reserve but beneath it all, his faculty of divining men and women was exercised with almost uncanny prescience and subtlety. The Scarlet Letter which explains as much of this unique imaginative art, as is to be gathered from reading his highest single achievement, yet needs to be ranged with his other writings, early and late, to have its last effect. In the year that saw it published, he began The House of the Seven Gables a later romance or prose- tragedy of the Puritan-American community as he had himself known it - defrauded of art and the joy of life,

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394 starving for symbols as Emerson has it. Nathaniel Hawthorne died at Plymouth, New Hampshire, on May
18th, 1864. The following is the table of his romances, stories, and other works
Fanshawe, published anonymously, 1826; Twice-Told Tales, st Series, 1837; 2nd Series, 1842; Grandfather’s Chair, a history for youth, 1845: Famous Old People Grandfathers Chair, 1841 Liberty Tree with the last words of Grandfather’s Chair, 1842; Biographical Stories for Children, 1842; Mosses from an Old Manse, 1846; The Scarlet Letter, 1850; The House of the Seven Gables,
1851: True Stories from History and Biography (the whole History of Grandfather’s Chair, 1851 A Wonder Book for Girls and Boys, 1851; The Snow Image and other Tales, 1851: The Blithedale Romance, 1852; Life of Franklin Pierce, 1852; Tanglewood Tales (2nd Series of the Wonder Book, 1853; A Rill from the Town-Pump, with remarks, by Telba, 1857; The Marble Faun or, The Romance of Monte Beni (4 EDITOR’S NOTE) published in England under the title of Transformation,
1860, Our Old Home, 1863; Dolliver Romance (st Part in Atlantic Monthly, 1864; in 3 Parts, 1876; Pansie, a fragment, Hawthorne last literary effort, 1864; American

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Note-Books, 1868; English Note Books, edited by Sophia Hawthorne, 1870; French and Italian Note Books, 1871;
Septimius Felton; or, the Elixir of Life (from the Atlantic Monthly, 1872; Doctor Grimshawe’s Secret, with Preface and Notes by Julian Hawthorne, 1882. Tales of the White Hills, Legends of New England, Legends of the Province House, 1877, contain tales which had already been printed in book form in ‘Twice-Told Tales and the Mosses Sketched and Studies 1883.
Hawthorne’s contributions to magazines were numerous, and most of his tales appeared first in periodicals, chiefly in The Token 1831-1838, New England Magazine 1834,1835; Knickerbocker 1837-
1839; Democratic Review 1838-1846; Atlantic Monthly 1860-1872 (scenes from the Dolliver Romance,
Septimius Felton, and passages from Hawthorne’s Note-
Books). Works in 24 volumes, 1879; in 12 volumes, with introductory notes by Lathrop, Riverside Edition, 1883. Biography, etc. ; AH. Japp (pseud. HA. Page, Memoir of N. Hawthorne, 1872; J. T. Field’s Yesterdays with Authors 1873 GP. Lathrop, A Study of Hawthorne 1876; Henry James English Men of Letters,
1879; Julian Hawthorne, Nathaniel Hawthorne and his

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394 wife 1885; Moncure D. Conway, Life of Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1891; Analytical Index of Hawthorne’s Works, by EMO Connor 1882.

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