The Scarlet Letter, A Romance
Boston: Ticknor, Reed and Fields, 1850. Octavo, measuring 7 x 4.5 inches: [4], iv, 322, [2]. Original blind-stamped brown cloth, rebacked with original gilt-titled spine laid down. Four pages of publisher’s advertisements, dated March 1, 1850, before title page. Title printed in black and red. Bookplate of Arthur Spingarn to front pastedown. Endpapers renewed, expert repair to spine ends and corners.
First edition of Hawthorne’s historical romance, one of 2500 copies published in March 1850. In his opening essay, “The Custom-House,” Hawthorne invokes the “persecuting spirit” of his Puritan ancestors, and imagines a tightly plotted revenge fantasy set amid the wilderness of seventeenth-century Massachusetts: “By thy first step awry, thou didst plant the germ of evil; but, since that moment, it has all been a dark necessity.” When Hawthorne read the final chapter aloud to his wife Sophia, he reported: “It broke her heart and sent her to bed with a grievous headache – which I look upon as triumphant success!” He was pessimistic, however, about the novel’s prospective sales, and was taken aback when The Scarlet Letter exhausted its first print run in only ten days. The publishers had already redistributed much of the original type, and had to reset the final third of the book for the second edition, which appeared in April 1850. This copy from the library of American civil rights lawyer, NAACP president, and noted book collector Arthur Spingarn (1878-1971), with his distinctive Art Deco bookplate designed by Ruth Reeves. BAL 7600. A very good copy of an American classic, with excellent provenance.
Price: $5,000.00