The Scarlet Letter (Wordsworth Classics) - Softcover

Anyone interested in how novels refract history will be enriched by the Broadview edition of The Scarlet Letter. The valuable introduction and extensive archival material will give readers a great foundation for using Hawthorne's historicist methodology as a model for discussing the complexities of history and storytelling not only for Hawthorne but for contemporary readers as well. --Lauren Berlant, University of Chicago

John Stephen Martin's meticulously prepared edition of The Scarlet Letter offers both students and general readers the most comprehensive introduction to Hawthorne's life and work currently available in one volume. With its historical contextualization, enormously helpful annotations, and judicious assessment of Hawthorne's greatest work, it establishes itself as the single best guide to this great American masterpiece. --Joel Porte, Cornell University

Introduction and Notes by Henry Claridge, Senior Lecturer, School of English, University of Kent at Canterbury. This is a troubling story of crime, sin, guilt, punishment and expiation, set in the rigid moral climate of 17th-century New England. The young mother of an illegitimate child confronts her Puritan judges. However, it is not so much her harsh sentence, but the cruelties of slowly exposed guilt as her lover is revealed, that hold the reader enthralled all the way to the book's poignant climax.