The Scarlet Letter

First published in 1850, this novel is set in seventeenth-century Boston. Hester Prynne stands on the scaffold with her infant Pearl after an adultery sentence, refuses to name the father, and lives at the town's edge, embroidering for a living. The physician Roger Chillingworth, her long-absent husband, arrives in disguise and attaches himself to the guilt-ridden minister Arthur Dimmesdale. Public shaming, secret penance, and the child's wildness occupy the action. The book is a psychological romance of sin and community law, not a documentary of Puritan statutes.

Bound in grey-black linen blocked with a cover design in red and gold by Frampton. Red endleaves. Black slipcase.