These days, we tend to think about The Scarlet Letter in relation to high school students struggling with their English ...

And just as today, the punishment is unequally distributed: Her lover’s identity is publicly unknown, so she wears the scarlet letter alone (just as Schlossberg is punished not just for his sin ...

historian Kate Winkler Dawson examines the 1832 killing that inspired The Scarlet Letter and America’s first true crime book. How did you first become interested in Sarah Maria Cornell’s murder?