Perhaps his first collection of stories, "Twice-Told Tales", was printed in scarlet letters?
The Twice-Told Tales he supplemented with two later collections, 
Mosses ... Hawthorne's short stories came slowly but steadily into critical favor, 
and the best ... which he suppressed shortly after publication, The Scarlet Letter 
was his first... [DOC] [TLE] Nathaniel Hawthorne - American Studies @ The University of Virginia [PAR] Disheartened by the cold reception of his first collection, he burned the ... 
Perhaps the tale most illustrative of this fictional territory is "Young Goodman 
Brown," which .... how the publication of Twice-Told Tales affected one of his 
Salem neighbors, ....