Take Note: Threads of the Scarlet Letter

Take Note: Threads of the Scarlet Letter

Literary detective Richard Kopley spent years tracing the identity of writers who influenced American novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne.  He says that Hawthorne transformed elements from the work of Edgar Allan Poe, James Russell Lowell and anonymous novelist, Ebenezer Wheelwright, for his classic novel The Scarlet Letter.  How much did Hawthorne borrow?  In today's world, would he be called a plagiarist?  Richard Kopley is associate professor of English at Penn State DuBois and author of "The Threads of The Scarlet Letter: A Study of Hawthorne's Transformative Art," published by University Press of Delaware.

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