?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,200 - $ 1,800
Hawthorne, Nathaniel (1804-1864) The Scarlet Letter, first edition with signed document.
Boston: Ticknor, Reed and Fields, 1850.
First edition, octavo; with 4 pp. of publisher's advertisements at front dated March 1, 1850; title printed in red and black; bound in full polished calf ruled with gilt, spine with gilt-lettered red morocco cartouches and decorated with two gilt birds holding garlands, narrow gilt-stamped turn-ins, marbled endpapers, all edges gilt; 7 x 4 1/4 in.
[Together with] Customs House Document signed by Hawthorne, dated April 2, 1849; single leaf of blue paper printed with black; bound-in before advertisements.
Four years before the publication of his magnum opus, Hawthorne was appointed the Surveyor for the District of Salem and Beverly and Inspector of the Revenue for the Port of Salem. A staunch Democrat, he had previously resigned from a similar role in Boston after the Whig party won the 1840 presidential election. When his writing failed to provide a steady income, Hawthorne was again forced to seek a government role. He arrived at the Salem Customs House in 1846. The uncertainty of the position made Hawthorne increasingly worried and caused major delays in his writing. The document preserved in the present lot is dated just four months before Hawthorne was finally ousted from his position after another administrative change in June of 1849. With no income, Hawthorne lived a frenzied few months, during which he produced the final draft of The Scarlet Letter. Luckily, the novel became an enormous bestseller, providing Hawthorne with the financial stability required to pursue writing full-time.
