The Scarlet Letter Project

1. The Scarlet Letter Project Based on the novel The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne Deanna Dailey Pd. AB

2. Nathaniel Hawthorne Nathaniel Hawthorne was born on July 4, 1804 in Salem, Massachusetts. His father was a U.S. Navy Captain and he died when Nathaniel was four years old. He went to Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine. Early on he was an enthusiastic reader and some of his short stories were published in magazines. His guilt from his great grandfather being involved in the Salem Witch Trials was a theme in many of his stories. He married Sophia Peabody in 1842 and their middle child, Julian Hawthorne, also became an author. Moby Dick was dedicated to Hawthorne by Herman Melville in 1851. The last book Hawthorne had published before his death in 1864 was Our Old Home. “The Scarlet Letter was the first, and the tendency of criticism is to pronounce it the most impressive, also, of these ampler productions. It has the charm of unconsciousness; the author did not realize while he worked, that this "most prolix among tales" was alive with the miraculous vitality of genius. It combines the strength and substance of an oak with the subtle organization of a rose, and is great, not of malice aforethought, but inevitably. It goes to the root of the matter, and reaches some unconventional conclusions, which, however, would scarce be apprehended by one reader in twenty…” -Julian Hawthorne Sources: www.online-literature.com/hawthorne/ www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1886/04/the-scarlet-letter-by-nathaniel-hawthorne/304668/