Nathaniel Hawthorne became one of the first major American masters of words, recognized beyond the borders of the USA. His novel "The Scarlet Letter," published in 1850, received wide acclaim in Europe. It became the writer's most famous work. "The Scarlet Letter" can be considered a historical novel, as the action takes place in the 17th century during the colonization of the Massachusetts Bay and the founding of Boston. However, unlike the novels of F. Cooper, Hawthorne emphasized not the reconstruction of historical events or a detailed description of material realities of the past in his work. He sought to describe the very spirit of those times, on which the entire civilization of the New World was based. Those contemporaries of the writer, increasingly drawn into the whirlpool of mercantilism, strove to understand the origins and causes of their current state. Hawthorne's novel, built on the clash of strict postulates of Puritan dogma with the free manifestation of feelings, partly answered these questions. That is why it became a bestseller in the USA. The main postulate of the novel was the writer's call to always speak only the truth. In the atmosphere of lies, demagoguery, and wordiness that prevailed in American political and social life in the mid-19th century, this call from Hawthorne sounded like a bell. It is still relevant today.
This edition is supplemented by little-known diary entries of the writer, which he made shortly before the publication of "The Scarlet Letter." This short story became a completely new word in fiction for its time. Before Hawthorne, no writer had written about the life of a father who remained alone with a small child for an extended period.
The novel in this edition is adorned with illustrations by the remarkable English artist Hugh Thomson. He was born in 1860 in Northern Ireland. His drawings caught the attention of the employees of the printing house where Hugh began to work. Its owner, Marcus Ward, supported the young man, and illustrator John Vinnicomb began to give Thomson lessons in mastery. Hugh did not receive systematic artistic education, but this did not prevent him from earning fame as a classic of book illustration even during his lifetime. Drawing was his life, and he devoted all his time to his beloved craft. Thomson managed to illustrate hundreds of books, including novels by Dickens, Thackeray, Austen, and plays by Shakespeare. The public was amazed at how accurately he conveyed the details of interiors, landscapes, clothing of characters, and their personalities in his drawings. All these features are also present in the illustrations that Thomson created for Nathaniel Hawthorne's novel.
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