Hawthorne, Nathaniel Books

The Scarlet Letter

Nathaniel Hawthorne

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 16 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

ENDURING LITERATURE ILLUMINATED

BY PRACTICAL SCHOLARSHIP

Hawthorne's classic treatise on morality, judgment, and exile in Puritan America.

EACH ENRICHED CLASSIC EDITION INCLUDES:

• A concise introduction that gives readers important background information

• A chronology of the author's life and work

• A timeline of significant events that provides the book's historical context

• An outline of key themes and plot points to help readers form their own interpretations

• Detailed explanatory notes

• Critical analysis, including contemporary and modern perspectives on the work

• Discussion questions to promote lively classroom and book group interaction

• A list of recommended related books and films to broaden the reader's experience

Enriched Classics offer readers affordable editions of great works of literature enhanced by helpful notes and insightful commentary. The scholarship provided in Enriched Classics enables readers to appreciate, understand, and enjoy the world's finest books to their full potential.

SERIES EDITED BY CYNTHIA BRANTLEY JOHNSON

The Scarlet Letter and Other Writings (Norton Critical Editions)

Nathaniel Hawthorne

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Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

This Norton Critical Edition of Nathaniel Hawthorne's most widely read novel appears during the bicentennial anniversary year of his birth. The text of The Scarlet Letter is based on the 1850 third edition, the first set in stereotype plates and the basis of subsequent printings in Hawthorne's lifetime.

An invaluable selection of contextual material includes five Hawthorne stories that are closely related to The Scarlet Letter, along with relevant letters and notebook entries. A substantial excerpt from Hawthorne's campaign biography of Franklin Pierce offers a revealing glimpse at Hawthorne's political thought, especially regarding slavery and abolition.

"Criticism" provides a comprehensive overview of early and modern commentary on The Scarlet Letter and the stories in this edition, including nineteenth-century reviews of the novel and critical essays by Robert S. Levine, Nina Baym, Larry J. Reynolds, and Jean Fagan Yellin.

A Chronology and Selected Bibliography are also included.

About the Series: No other series of classic texts equals the caliber of the Norton Critical Editions. Each volume combines the most authoritative text available with the comprehensive pedagogical apparatus necessary to appreciate the work fully. Careful editing, first-rate translation, and thorough explanatory annotations allow each text to meet the highest literary standards while remaining accessible to students. Each edition is printed on acid-free paper and every text in the series remains in print. Norton Critical Editions are the choice for excellence in scholarship for students at more than 2,000 universities worldwide.

The Scarlet Letter (Penguin Classics)

Nathaniel Hawthorne

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 404 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

A wonderful piece of literature, however 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

I completely agree with most HS students that this book should be optional reading for them because HS teachers should very well know that there are many different minds that need very different kinds of reading material and exposure to variety is not always a good thing that's why you end up having reviews of books like this by some HS students who puke on it rather then have savored it like I did. My reasons for really loving this book is because of the historical/puritan life and manners I like to read about, I love human struggle and the need to understand inner feelings of character, and I like knowing about how communities deal with religious matters. Can you blame me for being such a sentimental person? Yes, the book is written at the 5th grade level, and some people still do read at that level so this may be a reason why it's survived for such a long time. In any case, don't have it on your book shelf if it's not your cup of tea; with me, it will always be a treasure.

Editorial Review:

Set in the harsh Puritan community of seventeenth-century Massachusetts, this tale of an adulterous entanglement resulting in an illegitimate birth engendered the first true heroine of American fiction.

Introduction by Nina Baym
Notes by Thomas E. Connolly

The Scarlet Letter (Modern Library Classics)

Nathaniel Hawthorne

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 17 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

The first masterpiece of American literature 5 out of 5 stars.
5 of 5 people found this review helpful.

"All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God," might well be Nathaniel Hawthorne's theme in The Scarlet Letter. Certainly, by all community standards Hester Prynne's adultery is a sin. Worse yet Arthur Dimmesdale has triply sinned since he has had carnal knowledge of a member of his flock, and through a deep and abiding cowardice has failed to acknowledge his sin; and what is even worse yet, he allows Hester to bear the weight of public condemnation alone.

However the worse sin of all belongs to Roger Chillingworth, Hester's husband who is not dead at all, but returned in disguise as a physician who has learned the efficacy of various medicinal concoctions from the Indians during his captivity. He pretends to befriend Dimmesdale in order to extract his long and torturous revenge. But it is Chillingworth's character itself more than anything that marks him as the worse of the sinners. He lives only for revenge and to give pain and suffering. He cares nothing for his wife and her child. He cares nothing for anyone, not even himself. He lives only to avenge.

Dimmesdale's sin is that of a weak character. In a sense Dimmesdale is Everyman, the non-heroic. We see the contrast between the proud bravery of Hester and the all too human weakness of Dimmesdale who cannot bring himself to confess his sin, but looks to her strength to do it for him. We see this in the first scaffold scene as he pleads along with Chillingworth for Hester to reveal the father's identity. "Reveal it yourself!" we want to say.

While some have seen Chillingworth as the devil incarnate--and indeed I suspect that was Hawthorne's intent--it might be closer to the truth to see him as the vengeful God of the Old Testament with his lust to mysterious power and his desire to see the sinful suffer. At any rate, Hawthorne's masterpiece--and it is a masterpiece, one of the pillars of American literature, to be ranked with such great works as Melville's Moby-Dick and Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn--is about sin and the effect of sin; and this is only right since the central tenet of Christianity itself is sin and the forgiveness of sin.

By employing and investigating deeply three types of sin--Hester's from love and even something close to innocence; Dimmesdale's from lust, pride, neglect and cowardice; and Chillingworth's from hate--Hawthorne came up with a most felicitous device for examining the human soul.

The Scarlet Letter is regularly taught at the high school level, but surely this is a mistake. The novel is difficult and challenging even for honors students. The architectured sentences, with their points and counterpoints, their parallel construction, their old school rhetorical cadences are strange and even wondrous to the modern eye. It is a good practice for the teacher and for the student to read aloud Hawthorne's prose so as to grow accustomed to his words the way one must for Shakespeare. If this is done and the edifice of Christianity and especially the fatalism of the Puritan mind brought to bear, then with leisurely pace and a steady concentration, the terrible beauty of Hawthorne's novel might be made immediate.

Although the story itself is compelling, and the prose rich and poetic, the real strength of this great novel is in its characters. How true to life are all of them including even little Pearl who is defiant and willful in her beauty and her promise, so like a heroine-to-be of a modern novel. And how despicable and loathsome is this bent old man who embodies the very soul of the despised! And how attractive on a superficial level is this pretty young pastor whose actions are not the equal of his looks. And how strong and faithful and heroic is Hester who invites both envy and admiration, something like a flawed goddess of yore.

What stuck me when I first read this, and remains with me today, is that it is those who presume to punish sin who are the real sinners. Chillingworth's life is one devoid of human feeling, devoid of any real joy as he lies in the stone cold bed of hatred and revenge. And to a lesser extent so it is with Dimmesdale who cannot forgive himself, who secretly flagellates himself so that his life becomes a hell on earth. On the other hand there is Hester who finds forgiveness and love with good works and in the joy of her beautiful and precious Pearl and in her unstinting love for Dimmesdale and her hope and faith that a better life will come.

This is a deeply Christian novel although it is usually seen as a criticism of Christianity in the sense that the Christian community condemns the least of the sinners while the hypocrisy of its clergy is made manifest. Looking deeper we see that it is forgiveness of sin and the redemption that comes from good works that is exemplified. Hester knows the joy of life because she is a loving and giving person; and on another level she is forgiven because we the reader forgive her. How could we not? And most of the Puritan flock also forgave her since it came to be said that the scarlet "A" she wore upon her person stood not for "Adultery" but for "Able."

It is also good to realize that when Hawthorne published the novel in 1850 the scene of the story was nearly two hundred years removed. Thus Hawthorne looked back at Puritan America from the standpoint of a more secular society greatly influenced by Jeffersonian deism and the transcendentalism of Emerson and Thoreau. In some respects, Hawthorne's brilliant treatment of the ageless theme of sin, guilt and redemption was a serendipitous, even unconscious, artifact of his literary skill. No artist composes a masterpiece without some deep talent at work independent of his conscious efforts.

Editorial Review:

A stark and allegorical tale of adultery, guilt, and social repression in Puritan New England, The Scarlet Letter is a foundational work of American literature. Nathaniel Hawthorne's exploration of the dichotomy between the public and private self, internal passion and external convention, gives us the unforgettable Hester Prynne, who discovers strength in the face of ostracism and emerges as a heroine ahead of her time. As Kathryn Harrison points out in her Introduction, Hester is "the herald of the modern American heroine, a mother of such strength and stature that she towers over her progeny much as she does the citizens of Salem."

Nathaniel Hawthorne : Tales and Sketches (Library of America)

Nathaniel Hawthorne

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 4 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

All or Nothing at All 5 out of 5 stars.
18 of 18 people found this review helpful.

This is the best selection to buy of Hawthorne's short stories because it is NOT a selection, it is complete and, if you believe the editor, it's actually more accurate in its assessment of what is and is not a Hawthorne story than some complete collections because he did not include here some stories that his co-editors on the Hawthorne Centenary Edition did want to include. (Hawthorne spent much of his career as an underpaid and unsung magazine writer and some of his work went with no byline and without reprinting at his own choice, so what he wrote is no easy matter to decide.) The stories are, you probably know if you're looking up this book, stark and wonderful. But some of them are also twee and a little fanciful and not so wonderful. That too is instructive. One very useful thing about this volume is that it includes a listing of when each story first saw print in magazine form and when in book form. In that way the reader can chart Hawthorne's development as a magazine writer and a professional which in every possible sense of the word he determined to become and despite some difficult odds finally was. Some of the most beautiful and terrifying stories in the language and a beautiful object to hold in your hand. Expensive, but if you can get it - this is the one to buy.

Editorial Review:

"Tales and Sketches" offers what no reader has ever been able to find--an authoritative edition of Hawthorne's complete stories in a single comprehensive volume. Here is everything from his three collections, "Twice-told Tales," "Mosses from an Old Manse," "The Snow-Image, and Other Twice-told Tales," his two books of stories for children based on classical myths, "A Wonder Book for Girls and Boys" and "Tanglewood Tales," and sixteen uncollected stories. The unique arrangement by order of publication charts Hawthorne's evolution into one of the most powerful and experimental writers of American fiction. From familiar but always surprising works like "Young Goodman Brown," to masterly fables like "My Kinsman, Major Molineux," to lesser known gems like "The Wives of the Dead," these haunting stories of love and guilt, of duty and licence, of the fateful ties of family and nation, show why Hawthorne is a great artist, and an astonishingly contemporary one.

The Scarlet Letter: A Kaplan SAT Score-Raising Classic

Nathaniel Hawthorne

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

A great classic-- but will a 17-year-old enjoy it? 4 out of 5 stars.
14 of 14 people found this review helpful.

I am an SAT tutor and believe that this is one of the most valuable books of its type a student preparing for the test can read. Unfortunately, in my experience, students also find this one of the least enjoyable books. Why is it valuable?
There are 2 major areas that a student must master to improve scores on the SAT Critical Reading section: (1) Vocabulary. (2) Understanding of complex sentence structures. This book provides a student with both. (1) SAT words are bolded, their definitions conveniently located on the facing page. (2) Sentence structure is complex and the book is written in "older" English which is partly a result of the era it was written in. The college board knows this and even suggests that students read books written before 1900. The complex sentences and old language may be reasons students do not put The Scarlet Letter on their Top 10 Favorite Books List, but it does not take away from the book's value-- if you can get your child to read it.

Editorial Review:

The Scarlet Letter: A Kaplan SAT Score-Raising Classic features:

*The complete tale of the classic novel, The Scarlet Letter

*More than 800 vocabulary words frequently tested on the SAT highlighted throughout the text

*Definitions for each highlighted word on the facing page

*A pronunciation guide

*An index for easy reference

A Wonder-Book for Girls and Boys (Everyman's Library Children's Classics)

Nathaniel Hawthorne

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 4 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

"...it had the effect of a vision." - from the Introductory 5 out of 5 stars.
23 of 23 people found this review helpful.

Hawthorne's gentle, charming collection of classic myths retold for the children of his day is a neglected classic. Addressing the reader in personable Victorian fashion, his prose is clear and beautiful. Consider this sample:

"Within the verge of the wood there were columbines, looking more pale than red, because they were so modest, and had thought proper to seclude themselves too anxiously from the sun. There were wild geraniums, too, and a thousand white blossoms of the strawberry. The trailing arbutus was not yet quite out of bloom; but it hid its precious flowers under the last year's withered forest-leaves, as carefully as a mother-bird hides its little young ones."

But Hawthorne is also equal to the task of less genteel, more vigorous images:

"At this sound the three heads reared themselves erect, and belched out great flashes of flame. Before Bellerophon had time to consider what to do next, the monster flung itself out of the cavern and sprung straight toward him, with its immense claws extended, and its snaky tail twisting itself venomously behind."

Adding to the pleasure of these retold tales is the gorgeous art of Arthur Rackham, both in black-and-white drawings and full-color plates, which captures the unearthly beauty and the unexpectedly surprising humor of Hawthorne's work. Highly recommended!

Editorial Review:

A retelling of classical Greek myths.

Tanglewood Tales: For Girls and Boys (Tor Classics)

Nathaniel Hawthorne

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 4 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Tor Classics are affordably-priced editions designed to attract the young reader. Original dynamic cover art enthusiastically represents the excitement of each story. Appropriate "reader friendly" type sizes have been chosen for each title—offering clear, accurate, and readable text. All editions are complete and unabridged, and feature Introductions and Afterwords.

This edition of Tanglewood Tales includes a Foreword, Biographical Note, and Afterword from the Publisher.

Set sail with the greatest heroes of all time. Take up arms as they battle terrifying monsters. Be thrilled as they match wits with the gods. Enter a world of magic and intrigue and adventure in these exciting retellings of the greatest legends of Greek mythology.

Theseus. With the help of Ariadne he battles the ferocious Minotaur-a hulking beast who is half-man and half-bull!

Circe. She is a beguiling enchantress who charms Odysseus with an intoxicating potion that turns men into pigs! Luckily, Odysseus has a few tricks up his sleeve.

Cadmus. He sets off to rescue his sister Europa, who has been abducted by a bull. But the bull is none other than mighty Zeus himself!

Jason. After many adventures he and his Argonauts find the Golden Fleece-tucked away in a sacred grove and guarded by a ferocious dragon!

Here are the most exciting tales of the ancient Greeks, written especially for young people by one of our greatest authors.

The Scarlet Letter (Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism)

Nathaniel Hawthorne

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

What Good Or Healthy Things Will You Sacrifice To Please Your Community? 4 out of 5 stars.
1 of 5 people found this review helpful.

I like the cover of this publication of the novel and related writings because it places the focus where the focus should be - on an abandoned mother and an innocent child. It does not focus on the community's over zealous, unwarranted, and destructive symbol of shame (as most other covers do). The Scarlet Letter raises universal questions. The questions Hester Prynne faced every day of her life were:

1) What good parts of yourself do the people close to you and the people in your community want you to silence or kill?

Her community forced her to wear the label of "A" for the rest of her life, to signal that she was second rate, shamed, and fallen. They wanted her to be dominantly defined by her one choice rather than by all the many good character choices she made before or after that choice. But she liked the parts of herself that loved her child and her lover. She did not wish to exclude either of them. Her community was constantly trying to persuade her that her internal reasoning and love for herself, her child, and her lover were flawed and sinful. Hester responded by embroidering her A to make it beautiful. She could not give up or kill those parts of herself.

2) What healthy relationships with others do your community pressure you to cut off or condemn?

Hester Prynne was repeatedly publicly vilified and tortured in attempts to get her to reveal the father of her baby. Her child was labeled as not legitimate, not a full human being deserving of full honor or recognition. The church threatened to take Hester's only child "Pearl" away (Pearl - a jewel created in response to a foreign embedded object) if she did not conform.

But Hester refused to join the community in shaming the child or the father. She continued to love both the father and the child. She stayed in communication with both as much as she could (without bringing shame to the father). She refused to cut off either of those relationships. And because she did not consider the father's acts to be sins deserving of the punishment the community would give, she hid the father's identity and chose to live a life where she was ridiculed and disdained by her whole community.

There are not many people, men or women, of Hester Prynne's individual strength of character in the real world. But there are good reasons why her adulterous story has resonated for so many years. Her response to adultery reminds me of another great teacher who was presented with an woman caught in the act of adultery. Having great knowledge and understanding of the complexities of love and human connections, his response at that moment was to neither condemn adultery or the adulteress, but rather to say, "Let him that is without sin among you be the first to cast a stone at her."

Editorial Review:

This volume presents the authoritative Centenary Edition text of Hawthorne’s classic 1851 novel, along with critical essays that read The Scarlet Letter from contemporary reader-response, psychoanalytic, feminist, and new historicist perspectives. Three brief additional essays demonstrate how several critical perspectives can be combined. As in the first edition, the text and essays are complemented by biographical and critical introductions, bibliographies, and a glossary of critical and theoretical terms. Five of the seven essays are new to the second edition, as is a selection of cultural documents and illustrations.

A Wonder Book: Heroes and Monsters of Greek Mythology (Evergreen Classics)

Nathaniel Hawthorne

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

A great book about greek mythology. 4 out of 5 stars.
6 of 6 people found this review helpful.

The book, A Wonder Book, is a good book about Greek mythology. This adventurous book includes Medusa, Perseus, Hercules, Pegasus and many more well known characters. The stories are told by a man named Eustace Bright. He is telling all the stories to a couple curious children. The children enjoy the stories a lot and always want to hear them. Each story is told in a different place and time. Each tale is different and interesting. I recommend this book to curious children and teens that are interested in Greek mythology.

Editorial Review:

Evil creatures, magical feats, and adventure abound in this classic archive of 6 ancient tales. A captivating recounting for youngsters by one of America's greatest writers. "The Gorgon's Head," "The Golden Touch," "The Paradise of Children," "The Three Golden Apples," "The Miraculous Pitchers," and "The Chimaera."