The Blithedale Romance

by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Annette Kolodny (Introduction)

Overview

One of Hawthorne's great romances, The Blithedale Romance draws upon the author's experiences at Brook Farm, the short-lived utopian community where Hawthorne spent much of 1841. Blithedale ("Happy Valley"), another would-be modern Arcadia, is the stage for Hawthorne's grimly comic tragedy (Henry James famously called the novel "the lightest, the brightest, the liveliest" of Hawthorne's "unhumorous fictions"). In his introduction, Robert S. Levine considers biographical and historical contexts and offers a fresh appreciation of the novel's ironic first-person narrator. The John Harvard Library edition reproduces the authoritative text to The Blithedale Romance in The Centenary Edition of the Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne.

Since 1959 The John Harvard Library has been instrumental in publishing essential American writings in authoritative editions.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780140390285
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	08/25/1983
Series:	Penguin Classics Series
Edition description:	Reissue
Pages:	304
Sales rank:	685,625
Product dimensions:	5.10(w) x 7.70(h) x 0.70(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Nathaniel Hawthorne was born on July 4, 1804, in Salem, Massachusetts, the son and grandson of proud New England seafarers. He lived in genteel poverty with his widowed mother and two young sisters in a house filled with Puritan ideals and family pride in a prosperous past. His boyhood was, in most respects, pleasant and normal. In 1825 he was graduated from Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Maine, and he returned to Salem determined to become a writer of short stories. For the next twelve years he was plagued with unhappiness and self-doubts as he struggled to master his craft. He finally secured some small measure of success with the publication of his Twice-Told Tales (1837). His marriage to Sophia Peabody in 1842 was a happy one. The Scarlet Letter (1850), which brought him immediate recognition, was followed by The House of the Seven Gables (1851). After serving four years as the American Consul in Liverpool, England, he traveled in Italy; he returned home to Massachusetts in 1860. Depressed, weary of writing, and failing in health, he died on May 19, 1864, at Plymouth, New Hampshire.

Date of Birth:

July 4, 1804

Date of Death:

May 19, 1864

Place of Birth:

Salem, Massachusetts

Place of Death:

Plymouth, New Hampshire

Education:

Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Maine, 1824

Read an Excerpt

I Old Moodie
(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "The Blithedale Romance"
by .
Copyright © 1983 Nathaniel Hawthorne.
Excerpted by permission of Penguin Publishing Group.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Introduction Robert S. Levine ix

Note on the Text xxxi

Chronology of Nathaniel Hawthorne's Life xxxiii

The Blithedale Romance

Preface 1

I Old Moodie 5

II Blithedale 9

III A Knot of Dreamers 14

IV The Supper-Table 23

V Until Bedtime 32

VI Coverdale's Sick-Chamber 39

VII The Convalescent 49

VIII A Modern Arcadia 58

IX Hollingsworth, Zenobia, Priscilla 69

X A Visitor from Town 81

XI The Wood-Path 89

XII Coverdale's Hermitage 98

XIII Zenobia's Legend 106

XIV Eliot's Pulpit 117

XV A Crisis 128

XVI Leave-Takings 137

XVII The Hotel 145

XVIII The Boarding-House 153

XIX Zenobia's Drawing-Room 160

XX They Vanish 168

XXI An Old Acquaintance 174

XXII Fauntleroy 182

XXIII A Village-Hall 194

XXIV The Masqueraders 204

XXV The Three Together 213

XXVI Zenobia and Coverdale 222

XXVII Midnight 229

XXVIII Blithedale-Pasture 238

XXIX Miles Coverdale's Confession 245

Selected Bibliography 249

Editorial Reviews

"Hawthorne, in putting this novel together, was engaged in the most serious literary enterprise of his career."
—Louis Auchincloss

From the Publisher