The Scarlet Letter is published

Nathaniel Hawthorne's story of adultery and betrayal in colonial America,
The Scarlet Letter, is published.

Hawthorne was born in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1804. Although the infamous
Salem witch trials had taken place more than 100 years earlier, the events still
hung over the town and made a lasting impression on the young Hawthorne.
Witchcraft figured in several of his works, including "Young Goodman Brown"
(1835) and The House of the Seven Gables (1851), in which a house is
cursed by a wizard condemned by the witch trials.

After attending Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, Hawthorne returned to
Salem, where he began his career as a writer. He self-published his first book,
Fanshawe (1828), but tried to destroy all copies shortly after
publication. He later wrote several books of short stories, including Twice
Told Tales (1837). In 1841, he tried his hand at communal living at the
agricultural cooperative Brook Farm but came away highly disillusioned by the
experience, which he fictionalized in his novel The Blithedale Romance
(1852).

Hawthorne married Sophia Peabody in 1842, having at last earned enough money
from his writing to start a family. The two lived in a house called the Old
Manse, in Concord, Massachusetts, and socialized with Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry
David Thoreau, and Branson Alcott, father of writer Louisa May Alcott.

Plagued by financial difficulties as his family grew, he took a job in 1845
at Salem's custom house, where he worked for three years. After leaving the job,
he spent several months writing The Scarlet Letter, which made him
famous.

In 1853, Hawthorne's old college friend, President Franklin Pierce, appointed
him American consul to England, and the family moved to England, where they
lived for three years. Hawthorne died in Plymouth, New Hampshire, in 1864.