Hester Prynne is publicly humiliated, imprisoned, and ostracized. It is the 17th century, and she lives in the strictly Puritan Massachusetts Bay Colony in Boston. After giving birth to a child out of wedlock, with an unknown father, she is now forced to wear a red A for the rest of her life. In Nathaniel Hawthorne's classic novel The Scarlet Letter [1850], Hester Prynne emerges as the first true heroine in American literature. Nathaniel Hawthorne [1804-1864] is counted among the great American writers. In addition to his psychological novels, with The Scarlet Letter being the most famous, he wrote a large number of short stories. Many of Hawthorne's tales are set in colonial New England, and he often drew inspiration from his own Puritan heritage.