“Hawthorne, Nathaniel. Hawthorne intended The Scarlet Letter to be a work of humor, and was bitterly disappointed when no one seemed to get the joke.
“In a letter to his friend Oliver Wendell Holmes, he wrote that he would have to make the comedy much broader in his next novel, The House of the Seven Gables.”
Via Dr. Boli’s encyclopedia of misinformation.
THE TEXAS SCRIBBLER 