Description

Franklin Library leather edition of Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Scarlet Letter: A Romance," Illustrated by Elaine Raphael and Don Bolognese, one of the 100 GREATEST BOOKS OF ALL TIME series, published in 1978. Bound in brown leather, the book has brown French moire silk end leaves, acid-free paper, symth-sewn binding, hubbed spine, acid-free paper, a satin book marker, Symth-sewn binding, gold gilding on three edges---in near FINE condition---except for 'very faint' shadow where a bookplate was cleanly removed on credits pag---more felt than seen! Nathaniel Hawthorne, who lived from 1804-1864, was born at SALEM, MASSACHUSETTS, to a prominent Puritan family whose ancestors included a judge at the Salem witchcraft trials. During his childhood he read extensively in the poets and romances and spent an impressionable year at a remote lake in Maine, after which he attended and graduated from BOWDOIN COLLEGE in 1825. "The Scarlet Letter" is set in Puritan Boston in the mid-17th century. In the author's second preface, a reviewer wrote: "The Scarlet Letter" has created an unprecented excitement in the respectable community. It could hardly have been more violent, indeed had he burned down the Custom-House, and quenched its lasting smoking ember in the blood of a certain venerable personage, against whom he is supposed to cherish a perculiar malevolence. An aged English scholar sends his young wife, HESTER PRYNNE, to establish their home in Boston. When he arrives two years later, he finds Hester in the pillory with her illegitimate child in her arms. She refuses to name her lover and is sentenced to wear a SCARLET A, signifying ADULTRESS, as a token of her sin. The husband conceals his identity, assumes the name of ROGER CHILLINGWORTH, and in the guise of a doctor seeks to discover her paramour. Hester is ostracized by the community, but she becomes an "angel of mercy," serving others. Ultimately, Chillingworth discovers that the REVEREND ARTHUR DIMMESDALE, a saintly young minister is the father of Hester's beautiful, mischievous child, PEARL. Rev. Dimmesdale has struggled for years with his burden of hidden guilt, but though he does secret penance, pride prevents him from confessing publicly, and he is tortured by his conscience. If Dimmesdale had confessed his sexual sin, he would have lost his job as minister and would have been permanently unemployed. Hester wishes to flee to Europe with her lover, but he refuses the plan as a temptation from the Evil One, and ultimately makes a confession on the pillory in which Hester had once been placed. Hester, with her open confession, survives. . .the men do not fare as well. 266 pages. I offer Combined shipping.