Book summary

Hawthorne's portrait of a utopian community whose collective ideals increasingly clash with the passions of individual members is based on his own experiences at Brook Farm. The novel tackles many of the burning issues of his day, including women's rights, spiritualism, and socialism. In spite of its seriousness, Henry James called it "the lightest, the brightest, the liveliest of Nathaniel Hawthorne's novels."

Media reviews

"Though not his greatest, THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE is the most 'actual' of Hawthorne's novels....We enjoy, in the direct way of lively reportage, the details of the farm....We enjoy the romance's images of homely country life undertaken by excessively refined sensibilities....Hawthorne's haunted, twilit imagination never admitted more local American daylight than in THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE."