The Scarlet Letter

In a small Puritan settlement bound by silence and suspicion, Hester Prynne steps onto the public scaffold with a scarlet letter "A" stitched to her chest, and refuses to name the father of her child. Nathaniel Hawthorne's 1850 masterpiece follows three lives fractured by one unconfessed sin: a proud, isolated mother; a vengeful husband hiding in plain sight; and a minister slowly consumed by the guilt he cannot speak aloud. Dense with symbolism and psychological tension, The Scarlet Letter remains one of the founding works of American fiction, a story about shame, hypocrisy, and the price of truth that still unsettles readers two centuries later. This Chronicle Vault edition presents the complete, unabridged text in a clean, fully reflowable format for all e-readers.