1804-1864

A collection of seven critical essays on Hawthorne's novel, arranged in chronological order of original publication.

One of Hawthorne's great romances, The Blithedale Romance draws upon the author's experiences at Brook Farm, the short-lived utopian community where Hawthorne spent much of 1841. Blithedale ("Happy Valley"), another would-be modern Arcadia, is the stage for Hawthorne's grimly comic tragedy (Henry James famously called the novel "the lightest, the brightest, the liveliest" of Hawthorne's "unhumorous fictions"). In his introduction, Robert S. Levine considers biographical and historical contexts and offers a fresh appreciation of the novel's ironic first-person narrator. The John Harvard Library edition reproduces the authoritative text to The Blithedale Romance in The Centenary Edition of the Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne.

Presents Nathaniel Hawthorne's classic novel "The Scarlet Letter," along with selected short stories, poems, and essays.

A study and reinterpretation of the three nineteenth century American writers.

Contains a complete plot summary and analysis of Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Scarlet Letter", as well as discussion of the characters and themes, and includes study questions.

A graphic novel retelling of the classic story of Hester Prynne, a young wife who struggles to keep her dignity after being condemned by Puritan law to wear the scarlet letter "A" for adultress, while her lover is tormented by the burden of an unexposed sin.

Presents an annotated edition of "The Scarlet Letter," the story of a young wife convicted of adultery in seventeenth-century New England, and includes five shorter works by Hawthorne, a selection of the author's letters and notebook entries, and critical commentary.

Presents extracts from essays, reviews, and articles, including both American and British sources, that provide critical analyses of Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Scarlet Letter.".