The Scarlet Letter: A Romance is a work of historical fiction by American author Nathaniel Hawthorne, published in 1850.A smash hit in its day, The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne is the gripping tale of three New England settlers at odds with the seventeenth-century Puritan society in which they live, and remains one of literature's most evocative portraits of a love triangle.Roger Chillingworth arrives in New England after two years' separation from his wife, Hester Prynne, to find her o ...