This listing closed and did not sell. The item has been relisted.

Browse for similar listings in Author G-I
View the relisted item

Other listings you might like

Description

This is an auction for THE SCARLET LETTER by Nathaniel Hawthorne.

This is a deluxe hardback edition with gold-blocked pages, published by the Franklin Library (US).

Illustrations by Charles Duke.

From Wikipedia:

"The Scarlet Letter, published in 1850, is an American novel written by Nathaniel Hawthorne and is generally considered to be his magnum opus. Set in Puritan Boston in the seventeenth century, it tells the story of Hester Prynne, who gives birth after committing adultery, refuses to name the father, and struggles to create a new life of repentance and dignity. Throughout the novel, Hawthorne explores the issues of grace, legalism, sin, and guilt. The story of The Scarlet Letter is framed by a preface (called "The Custom-House") in which the narrator, a surveyor in the Custom House, claims to have found documents and papers that substantiate the evidence concerning Prynne and her situation. The narrator says that when he touched the letter to his breast it gave off a "burning heat...as if the letter were not of red cloth, but red hot iron." Among these documents, the narrator claims to have found the death certificate of Anne Hutchinson, previously believed to have been destroyed by the Puritan church leaders as they tried to cover up her brutal murder two years earlier. The manuscript, the work of a past surveyor, Jonathan Pue, detailed the events of the trials of Hutchinson's alleged murderers. When the narrator lost his post, he decided to write a fictional account of the events recorded in the manuscript. The Scarlet Letter is the final product..."