The Scarlet Letter

The Scarlet Letter: A Romance is a historical novel by American author Nathaniel Hawthorne, published in 1850 and set in the Puritan Massachusetts Bay Colony during the years 1642 to 1649. It tells the story of Hester Prynne, who conceives a daughter with a man to whom she is not married and then struggles to lead a new life of repentance and dignity, forced as punishment to wear a scarlet letter A for adultery. Containing a number of religious and historic allusions, the book explores themes of legalism, sin and guilt, was one of the first mass-produced books in the United States, and is commonly listed among the Great American Novels.