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The Scarlet Letter Audiobook
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When it first appeared in 1850, The Scarlet Letter enjoyed scandalous success. New England critics condemned its passionate subject matter. One critic complained that Hawthorne invested adultery “with all the fascination of genius, and all the charms of a highly polished style.” “My preliminary chapter,” wryly noted its author, Nathaniel Hawthorne, “has caused the greatest uproar that has happened here since witch-times.”
As she emerges from the prison of a Puritan New England town, Hester Prynne defies the dark gloom much as the rose blooms against the prison door. With her illegitimate baby, Pearl, clutched in her arms and the letter A—the mark of an adulteress—embroidered in scarlet thread on her breast, Hester holds her head high as she faces the malice and scorn of the townsfolk.
Who is the father of the child? Hester will not reveal his name. Why is she protecting him? She will not say. Her powerful, bittersweet story is an American classic that continues to touch the hearts of modern readers with its timeless themes of guilt, passion and repentance.
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About Nathaniel Hawthorne
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864) is considered to be one of the greatest American authors of the nineteenth century. He was born in Salem, Massachusetts, and made his ambition to be a writer while still a teenager. He graduated from Bowdoin College in Maine, where the poet Longfellow was also a student, and spent several years traveling in New England and writing short stories before his best known novel, The Scarlet Letter, was published in 1850. His writing was not at first financially rewarding, and he worked as measurer and surveyor in the Boston and Salem Custom Houses. In 1853 he was sent to Liverpool as American consul and then lived in Italy before returning to the United States in 1860.