The Scarlet Letter is a novel written by American author Nathaniel Hawthorne and published in 1850.The story takes place in the Puritan Boston of the mid 17th century and revolves around a woman named Hester Prynne,who conceived a child out of wedlock and was forced to wear a scarlet letter A (Adulreress) which condemns her to alife of struggle and humiliation. Nathaniel Hawthorne s work has endured the test of time for the human appeal of his stories and the deep psychological complexity of his characters.