'The Scarlet Letter' Proofs Found In Natick Drawer Up For Auction

NATICK, MA — The annotated page proofs of Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Scarlet Letter" have a unique connection to Natick.

Those page proofs, which historians say gives us the closest thing to the completed original work, are now up for auction at Christie's. They auction is set to open this week with an estimated buyer's price between $600,000 to $800,000.

View the Christie's listing here.

So how did these pages in end in Natick?

The story goes that one of Hawthorne's relatives donated the proofs to an organization that later became the Natick Historical Society. Hawthorne himself was from Salem.

However, according to a 2004 CBS News story, the original pages were kept in a drawer for over 100 years until trustee Roger Casavant uncovered them.

According to the Christie's listing, the first leaf includes an inscription that reads: "Presented to the Historical Natural History and Library Society of South Natick Mass, by Mrs. Lucy T. (Bigelow) Mann. Aug. 1886."

After Casavant uncovered the pages, the board unanimously voted to auction them off because they were out of the society's typical field of collection, NBC News reported.

Now back at auction, the pages prove important to literary history for a few reasons.

The most obvious is that Nathaniel Hawthorne is regarded as one of the most important writers and "The Scarlet Letter" is an incredibly important work.

In terms of the specific pages, they are the closest thing we have to the original work as Hawthorne is said to have destroyed the original manuscript for the novel.

The manuscript will be auctioned as part of a larger collection of Hawthorne memorabilia, which is set to open for bids starting June 15.