The Scarlet Letter (Easton Press Collector's Edition)

HAWTHORNE, Nathaniel (illus. W. A. Dwiggins; frontispiece Richard Loehle). The Scarlet Letter. Norwalk, Connecticut: The Easton Press, 1975.

8vo. Full red leather. Spine with raised bands, prominent gilt "A" to front cover, 22-carat gilt accents throughout. All edges gilt. Deep red moiré silk endpapers. Satin ribbon page marker. x, 280 pp. Colour frontispiece portrait of the author by Richard Loehle. 24 pencil and charcoal illustrations by W. A. Dwiggins, preceding each chapter opening. Collector's Edition. Part of the "100 Greatest Books Ever Written" series. First Easton Press edition.

The Scarlet Letter was published in 1850 and made Hawthorne's reputation almost overnight. Set in the Puritan colony of Massachusetts in the 1640s, it tells the story of Hester Prynne, condemned to wear a scarlet "A" for adultery on her dress and forced to stand in public shame, who refuses to name the father of her child. The father is the Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, the colony's most admired clergyman; the wronged husband, Roger Chillingworth, returns from captivity and devotes himself to destroying Dimmesdale from within. The novel is constructed with the rigour of allegory and the density of symbol, but it is also a psychological study of extraordinary precision, tracing the effects of concealed guilt on a man constitutionally incapable of honest confession.

Hawthorne changed his name from Hathorne partly to distance himself from his ancestor John Hathorne, one of the presiding judges at the Salem witch trials of 1692. The Puritan past was not an abstraction for him; it was family history, and The Scarlet Letter is in part an act of reckoning with it. The novel influenced Melville so profoundly that Moby-Dick, dedicated to Hawthorne, can be read in part as a response to its methods.

The illustrations were designed by W. A. Dwiggins (1880–1956), one of the most consequential figures in twentieth-century American typography and book design. Dwiggins coined the term "graphic design," created the typefaces Caledonia and Electra for Linotype, and shaped the visual character of American publishing for three decades through his work with Alfred A. Knopf. His involvement in this early Easton Press edition gives it a particular distinction among the series. The 1975 publication date places this copy among the earliest productions of the Easton Press Collector's Edition programme.

Fine. Presents as new.

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Catalogue Number: HH000480