This book provides a selectively comprehensive and cross-referenced record of the enormous body of scholarship on The Scarlet Letter from 1950 to 2000, as well as an introductory overview of the major patterns and trends in the critical interpretations of the novel. Designed for both new and seasoned readers/critics, the four-part study can be used in two ways: as a chronological record and historical survey of the development of ideas in criticism over five decades, and as a reference guide that can be accessed through the Author, Subject, and Critical Approach Indexes. Part I provides a chronological, annotated listing of the most frequently anthologized Early Reviews of the novel. Part II offers full citations for Early Influential Criticism Pre-1950] and is comprised of forty-one landmark commentaries that appeared between 1850 and 1950. Part III, which makes up the bulk of the project and begins with the year 1950, presents a comprehensive annotated bibliography of Scarlet Letter criticism that includes books, articles, special critical editions, collections of criticism, general student introductions and help books, teaching aids and guides, and biographies. critical editions, collections of criticism, general student introductions to the novel, teaching aids and guides, bibliographies, and biographies.