1
The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net
Title: The Scarlet Letter
Author: Nathaniel Hawthorne
Illustrator: Mary Hallock Foote L. S. Ipsen
Release Date: May 5, 2008 [EBook #25344]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SCARLET LETTER ***
Produced by Markus Brenner, Irma Spehar and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
THE SCARLET LETTER.
BY
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE.
Illustrated.
[Illustration]
BOSTON: JAMES R. OSGOOD AND COMPANY, LATE TICKNOR & FIELDS, AND FIELDS, OSGOOD, & CO. 1878.
COPYRIGHT, 1850 AND 1877. BY NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE AND JAMES R. OSGOOD & CO.
All rights reserved. October 22, 1874.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.
Much to the author's surprise, and (if he may say so without additional offence) considerably to his amusement, he finds that his sketch of official life, introductory to THE SCARLET LETTER, has created an unprecedented excitement in the respectable community immediately around him. It could hardly have been more violent, indeed, had he burned down the Custom-House,