Scarlet Letter

Nathaniel Hawthorne was born on July 4, 1804, in Salem, Massachusetts. In 1825 he graduated from Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Maine, and returned to Salem determined to become a writer. He finally secured some measure of success with his Twice-Told Tales in 1837. The Scarlet Letter (1850), which brought him immediate recognition, was followed by The House of the Seven Gables (1851). He died on May 19, 1864. Born in Havana, Cuba in 1961, Ruben Toledo is an illustrator, painter, sculptor and filmmaker. His fashion illustrations have appeared in Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, The New Yorker, Visionaire, Paper, Interview and The New York Times, and his commissions have included Tiffany & Co., Estee Lauder and Nordstrom's national advertising campaign. Toledo and his designer wife Isabel Toledo are the subject of both a book and museum exhibition entitled Toledo/Toledo: A Marriage of Art and Fashion. Together they were recipients of the 2005 Cooper-Hewitt Design Award for their work in fashion.

“[Nathaniel Hawthorne] recaptured, for his New England, the essence of Greek tragedy.”—Malcolm Cowley