Hawthorne, Nathaniel

V. S. Pritchett, one of our greatest short story writers, has chosen forty-one stories from nine countries written in the English language for this volume, producing a collection that successfully displays the wealth and variety of an art that spans some 200 years. The United States, Great Britain, and Ireland have fine traditions of short story writing that have developed from the time of Sir Walter Scott and Nathaniel Hawthorne. In the twentieth century the art was perfected by Ernest Hemingway, D. H. Lawrence, W. Somerset Maugham, John Updike, and V. S. Pritchett himself. Other contributions in the book come from such masters as James Joyce, Mark Twain, Henry James, Rudyard Kipling, Frank O'Connor, H. E. Bates, William Trevor, and Liam O'Flaherty. Now, the collection of short story masters extends to Canadian, Indian, New Zealander, and Australian writers, who show in the works included here the full range of invention and ability in a genre that continues to flourish.
*Includes Hawthorne's short story "Birthmark"

Hester Prynne, a young woman in seventeenth century Massachusetts, is condemned by Puritan law to wear a scarlet "A" as the symbol of the sin she committed. Includes biographical and historical context, contextual documents and illustrations, literary criticisms, and glossary.

Gathering forty important short stories in a portable and economical format, the second edition includes even more of the fiction instructors want to teach and more of the help student readers need.