Hawthorne, Nathaniel:

$3,500 · Offered by William Reese Company

THE SCARLET LETTER: A ROMANCE. First edition (2500 copies printed). Publisher's inserted preliminary catalogue dated March 1, 1850. Laid in is a clipped ink signed salutation by Hawthorne, inset into a larger leaf. There are no points of 'issue' for this title, contrary to popular parlance, but simple variations (including two settings of gathering 21) and loosening of type in the press run resulting in minute variations of no relevance to questions of "issue" in a proper sense of the term. This copy exhibits Clark's state x1 of pp. 321/2, and state a2 of pp. ii/iii. Hawthorne's most widely read work, and unquestionably an unshakeable pillar of canonical 19th-century American fiction. It is also a book now less accessible in agreeable condition than it was a decade ago.

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