Nathaniel Hawthorne 
The Blithedale Romance (Annotated) 

• This edition includes the following editor’s introduction: Nathaniel Hawthorne and Dark Romanticism

First published in 1852, “The Blithedale Romance” is a novel by American author Nathaniel Hawthorne. Hawthorne’s third novel and third major ’romance, ’ as he called the form. is set in a utopian farming commune based on
Brook Farm, an intentional community outside Boston of which Hawthorne was a founding member and where he lived in 1841.

The story loosely follows the author’s own experience living on the communal property and dramatizes the conflict between the commune’s ideals and the members’ private desires and romantic rivalries.

Part mystery, part romance, “The Blithedale Romance” follows Miles Coverdale (thought to be a mirror of Hawthorne himself), who narrates his experience coming to Blithedale Farm. He becomes acquainted with the group of idealists who live there.

There’s the leader of the group, the reformer Hollingsworth. Zenobia, a feminist, is the heroine of the story. Then there’s Priscilla, her sister; Old Moodie, her father; and Westervelt, a hypnotist. They all have one thing in common; they came to the farm to retreat from a society they view as rotten.

In the process of getting to know the others, Coverdale becomes disillusioned by their hypocrisies and contradictions…