The Scarlet Letter

Nathaniel Hawthorne, born July 4, 1804, in Salem, Massachusetts, was the author of Twice-Told Tales (1837), The Scarlet Letter (1850), and The House of the Seven Gables (1851), among other classic works. He died May 19, 1864, at Plymouth, New Hampshire. Harold Bloom is the author of twenty-seven books, including the New York Times bestsellers Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human; The Western Canon; and, most recently, Jesus and Yahweh: The Names Divine, and has been the recipient of numerous honors, including a MacArthur Fellowship and the Gold Medal for Belles Lettres and Criticism from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He is Sterling Professor Emeritus of Humanities at Yale University.