The Scarlet Letter (HarperCollins American Classics)

One of the Library of Congress’s “Books That Shaped America”
One of The Guardian's 100 Best Novels in English

In celebration of the 250th anniversary of the United States, HarperCollins is proud to present this library of American classics drawn from our storied catalog. A groundbreaking tale of injustice and perseverance that grapples with the founding history of this country, Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter tells the tale of one woman's dignity in the face of persecution, the threat she poses to Puritan power, and the desperate lengths people will reach to maintain the status quo.

A tale of sin, punishment and atonement, The Scarlet Letter exposes the moral rigidity of a 17th-Century Puritan New England community when faced with a "fallen" young mother and her illegitimate daughter. Forced to wear the scarlet “A” after committing adultery, Hester Prynne lives on the outskirts of society. Visited only by the Reverend Dimmesdale and watched over by Roger Chillingworth, she is both at the mercy of and defiantly against the immutable value system that shapes her fate and that of her child. Regarded as the first real heroine of American fiction, it is Hester Prynne's strength of character that Hawthorne champions, and that has inspired feminist literature for the nearly two centuries since the novel's publication.