The Scarlet Letter by HAWTHORNE, NATHANIEL

Boston: Ticknor, Reed, and Fields, 1850. 8vo., (7 x 4 4/8 inches). 4 pages publisher's advertisements dated March 1, 1850 tipped-in between the front endpapers. Title-page printed in red and black. Original brown ribbed cloth covers decorated in blind, spine lettered in gilt (lower outer hinge split, head and foot of the spine chipped with loss, corners worn, a bit shaken); preserved in a blue morocco backed slipcase and chemise Provenance: with the early pencilled inscription of F. Quincy on the front paste-down. First edition, this issue with the second page of "Contents" on page 'iv'; "reduplicate" at line 20, on page 21; "charactress" at line 5, page 41; "Catechism" line 29 at page 132; "known of it" at line 4 at page 199. "The Scarlet Letter" appeared in March 1850, "a story of a proud adulteress sentenced by her stern Puritan judges to wear a scarlet A on her breast, the hypocritical minister who was her lover, her beautiful, unruly child, and her revenge-obsessed husband. Despite Salemites' complaints of being maligned in the introduction and some critics' objections to the novel's "scandalous" subject, it was immediately hailed as a work of genius and America's first major novel. Its sales were brisk. "This first novel, Hawthorne's masterpiece, is an indictment of Puritan America but also of his own society. Its introductory essay, "The Custom-House," purportedly a straightforward account of his experience as surveyor, attacks officials who connived in his dismissal while vindicating himself. Like the novel's heroine, Hester Prynne, Hawthorne confronts a self-righteous society with self-assured dignity" (Rita K. Gollin for ANB). BAL 7600; Clark A16.1; Grolier American 59; Johnson High Spots 38. .