Hawthorne ∗blithedale∗ Romance: An Authoritative Text, Backgrounds and Sources, Criticism

Hawthorne, N

ISBN 10: 0393001644 ISBN 13: 9780393001648

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Co., 1958

Synopsis

Written in one of the most productive periods of Hawthorne's career, The Blithedale Romance was published a year after The House of the Seven Gables and two years after his masterpiece The Scarlet Letter. With The Blithedale Romance, Hawthorne writes fully in his own time, not haunting his characters with the American past. Drawn from his stay at Brook Farm, a communal experiment in living the pastoral life, this engaging story touches on many of the issues of Hawthorne's day, from brotherhood to women's rights and socialism to mesmerism and spiritualism.

About this title

Review

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

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

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.

Edition details

• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Co.
• Publication date: 1958
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0393001644
• ISBN 13: 9780393001648
• Binding: Unknown Binding
• Number of pages: 418