MUCH TO the author's surprise, and (if he may say so without additional offence) considerably to his amusement, he finds that his sketch of official life, introductory to THE SCARLET LETTER, has created an unprecedented excitement in the respectable community immediately around him. It could hardly have been more violent, indeed, had he burned down the Custom House, and quenched its last smoking ember in the blood of a certain venerable personage,against whom he is supposed to cherish a peculiar malevolence. As the public disapprobation would weigh very heavily on him, were he conscious of deserving it, the author begs leave to say that he has carefully read over the introductory pages, with a purpose to alter or expunge whatever might be found amiss, and to make the best reparation in his power for the atrocities of which he has been adjudged guilty.......

Hailed by Henry James as "the finest piece of imaginative writing yet put forth in the country ,"Nathaniel Hawthorne"s The Scarlet Letter reaches to our nation"s historical and moral roots for the material of great tragedy.Set in an early New England colony,the novel shows the terrible impact a single ,passionate act has on the lives of three members of the community:the defiant Hester Prynne;the fiery ,tortured Reverend Dimmesdale;and the obsessed ,vengeful Chillingworth.

Author"s Preface to the Second Edition

The Custom House-Introductory

1.The Prison-Door

2.The Market-Place 

3.The Recognition

4.The Interview

5.Hester at Her Needle

6.Pearl

7.The Governor"s Hall

8.The Elf-Child and the Minister

9.The Leech

10.The Leech and His Patient

11.The Interior of a Heart

12.The Minister"s Vigil

13.Another View of Hester

14.Hester and the Physician

15.Hester and Pearl

16.A Forest Walk

17.The Pastor and His Parishioner

18.A Flood of Sunshine

19.The Child at the Brook-Side

20.The Minister in a Maze

21.The New England Holiday

22.The Procession

23.The Revelation

24.Conclusion

Bibliography