Published in 1850, The Scarlet Letter follows Hester Prynne, condemned to wear the mark of her adultery on her chest in seventeenth-century Puritan Boston, and the secret guilt that destroys the man who fathered her child. Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote with profound psychological insight into the nature of sin, hypocrisy, and the corrosive power of hidden shame.
A cornerstone of American literature and a masterpiece of symbolic prose fiction, The Scarlet Letter has been read and taught continuously since its publication. Download this free public-domain EPUB at Better Gutenberg.