The Custom-House (Introductory)
Hawthorne's framing essay establishing the narrator's relationship to Puritan ancestors and the found relic of the embroidered A.
Read in Books4Free →Opening: The Custom-House
From The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
The novel famously opens not with Hester but with a long autobiographical sketch, 'The Custom-House,' framing the narrator's discovery of the scarlet letter and Surveyor Pue's manuscript.
Chapter 1, 'The Prison-Door'
The novel proper opens: 'A throng of bearded men, in sad-colored garments...' before the iconic image of the wild rose-bush beside the prison.
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