When an elderly English scholar discovers his young wife in the pillory, cradling an illegitimate child and wearing a scarlet A for Adulteress, he disguises himself as a doctor and begins a cruel and destructive search for the father of the child. Set in mid-seventeenth-century Boston, this powerful tale of passion, puritanism, and revenge is one of the foremost classics of American literature. Covering the most recent developments in Hawthorne scholarship, this up-to-date edition contains full and detailed notes.