Critical+Reviews+or+Forewords

D. H. Lawrence said that there could be no more perfect work of the American imagination than __The Scarlet Letter.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Scarlet_Letter__

Henry James said "It is beautiful, admirable, extraordinary; it has in the highest degree that merit which I have spoken of as the mark of Hawthorne's best things an indefinable purity and lightness of conception...One can often return to it; it supports familiarity and has the inexhaustible charm and mystery of great works of art."http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Scarlet_Letter

//The Scarlet Letter// was the first, and the tendency of criticism is to pronounce it the most impressive, also, of these ampler productions. It has the charm of unconsciousness; the author did not realize while he worked, that this "most prolix among tales" was alive with the miraculous vitality of genius.([])

Kimberly Free said, "No other classic American Novel can vie with //The Scarlet Letter// for widespread readership, critical attention, and influence. Accordingly, the novel has assumed, at least nominally, as much a part of American heritage as any cultural icon that anyone would be likely to name." ([])

Evert A. Duyckinck called the tale, "a psychological romance... a study of character in which the human heart is anatomized, carefully, elaborately, and with striking poetic and dramatic power." ([])