"Something might at last be sent to Europe as exquisite in quality as anything that had been received" (Henry James)

"No facile answers are provided here. Hester is, after all, guilty; Pearl the "Elfin" child, has devilish traits; the Puritans are given their due. Chillingworth and Dimmesdale are villains because of their hypocrisy but remain sympathetic because they are both self-destructive..." (Independent)

"A defiant adulteress; a community of hypocrites who force her to wear a scarlet letter A around her neck as a badge of her shame; an evil husband, secretly stoking the fires of their moral fervour until it reaches boiling point; and, finally, a stunning public confession in which the woman reveals the identity of her lover, who is then promptly sent to the gallows" (Sunday Times)

"In making fiction out of the excesses of his Puritan ancestors, Hawthorne anticipated the technique of a modern movie-director. He was a master of crowd scenes" (Financial Times)

"[Nathaniel Hawthorne] recaptured, for his New England, the essence of Greek tragedy" (Malcolm Cowley) --Ce texte fait référence à l'édition Broché .