A throng of bearded men in sad-coloured garments and grey steeple-crowned hats inter-mixed with women some wearing hoods and others bareheaded was assembled in front of a wooden edifice the door of which was heavily timbered with oak and studded with iron spikes The Scarlet Letter is an 1850 work of fiction in a historical setting written by Nathaniel Hawthorne and is considered to be his magnum opus Set in 17th-century Puritan Boston Massachuse...