Nathaniel Hawthorne was already a man of forty-six, and a tale
writer of some twenty-four years' standing, when "The Scarlet
Letter" appeared. He was born at Salem, Mass., on July 4th,
1804, son of a sea-captain. He led there a shy and rather sombre
life; of few artistic encouragements, yet not wholly
uncongenial, his moody, intensely meditative temperament being
considered. Its colours and shadows are marvelously reflected in
his "Twice-Told Tales" and other short stories, the product of
his first literary period. Even his college days at Bowdoin did
not quite break through his acquired and inherited reserve; but
beneath it all, his faculty of divining men and women was
exercised with almost uncanny prescience and subtlety. "The
Scarlet Letter," which explains as much of this unique
imaginative art, as is to be gathered from reading his highest
single achievement, yet needs to be ranged with his other
writings, early and late, to have its last effect. In the year
that saw it published, he began "The House of