The Scarlet Letter.

HAWTHORNE, Nathaniel.

$8,800.00

Item Number: 133264

London: Methuen & Co. Ltd, 1920.

First edition thus of Hawthorne’s masterpiece. Quarto, bound in full morocco by Bennett, elaborate gilt tooling to the spine, with scarlet leather onlay of the letter A on the front panel, gilt turn-ins and inner dentelles, marbled endpapers, all edges gilt, illustrated with 31 mounted color plates by Hugh Thomson. In fine condition. Housed in a linen slip case and chemise box. An exceptional example from The Bennett Book Studios, a fine book bindery in New York City established in the late 1920s by bookman and binder Whitman Bennett. From the library of bibliophile and Grolier Club member David Allen Fraser.

"The most memorable and original aspect of The Scarlet Letter lies in Hawthorne's portrait of Hester Prynne, who has been described as "the first true heroine of American fiction", a woman whose experience evokes the biblical fate of Eve. Hawthorne's achievement is to make her passion noble, her defiance heartbreaking and her frailty inspiring. She becomes the archetype of the free-thinking American woman grappling with herself and her sexuality in a cold, patriarchal society" (The Guardian). The first edition of The Scarlet Letter sold out in ten days and “made Hawthorne’s fame, changed his fortune and gave to our literature its first symbolic novel a year before the appearance of Melville’s Moby-Dick” (Bradley).