The Blithedale Romance

Inspired by Nathaniel Hawthornes own experience as a member of the famous Brook Farm Community, which the author describes in his preface as the most romantic episode in his life, The Blithedale Romance is one of the most engaging and complex of Hawthornes novels. Recounting the hopeful formation and slow fragmentation of a reform-minded socialist community in antebellum Massachusetts, the novel has increasingly preoccupied commentators on American literature and culture over the last few decades.

The editors new introduction helps the reader to negotiate Blithedales literary difficulties by offering a detailed reflection on the main problems confronted by past and present interpreters of the novel. Appendices expand on the central historical theme of reform, highlighting the novels references to womens emancipation, antislavery, and Utopian socialism.