The Scarlet Letter

Nathanial Hawthorne was the author of many classics, such as The Scarlet Letter and The House of Seven Gables.

Susan S. Williams has taught American literature in the English Department at Ohio State University since 1991. At Ohio State, she has served as director of Graduate Studies in the English Department and is the recipient of the Alumni Award for Distinguished Teaching, the university’s highest recognition for teaching. She is the author of two books, both published by the University of Pennsylvania Press: Confounding Images: Photography and Portraiture in Antebellum American Fiction (1997) and Reclaiming Authorship: Literary Women in America, 1850-1900 (2006). Her work has also appeared in American Quarterly, The New England Quarterly, Nineteenth-Century Literature, and Narrative, among others. She is coeditor, along with her colleague Steven Fink, of a collection of essays entitled Reciprocal Influences: Literary Production, Distribution, and Consumption in America (Ohio State UP, 1999). She also coedits the journal American Periodicals and currently serves on the board of the Nathaniel Hawthorne Society and of the Bedford Anthology of American Literature. She is currently writing a study of nineteenth-century abolitionist and publisher James Redpath.