Which American novelist wrote 'The Scarlet Letter'?

Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote “The Scarlet Letter,” a historical novel published in 1850. The book follows Hester Prynne, a woman in seventeenth-century Puritan New England who is publicly punished for adultery and forced to wear a scarlet “A.”

Hawthorne set the story in the Massachusetts Bay Colony between 1642 and 1649, using the period’s strict religious culture to explore guilt, secrecy, public shame, and moral judgment. Hester’s struggle is central, but the novel also examines the hidden guilt of Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale and the destructive obsession of her former husband, Roger Chillingworth.

A common mix-up is confusing Hawthorne with Edgar Allan Poe, another major nineteenth-century American writer known for dark themes. Poe wrote short stories and poems such as “The Raven,” while Hawthorne wrote “The Scarlet Letter” and “The House of the Seven Gables.”

The novel’s full title is “The Scarlet Letter: A Romance.” It was one of the earliest mass-produced books in the United States and helped establish Hawthorne as a major American novelist.