No shift in the concerns of society at large or in the emphases of literary criticism will ever dislodge The Scarlet Letter from its preeminent place among Hawthorne's novels. It will remain what it has been almost from its publication in 1850--the Hawthorne novel of most interest to both general reader and specialist. Second place,however, is less certain. There is growing evidence that The Blithedale Romance (1852), after a long period of neglect, is gradually coming to occupy that position. After an initial flurry of interest in the novel, nineteenth- and early twentieth-century critics--with the notable exceptions of Henry James and William Dean Howells--tended to brush the work aside. Typical is Paul Elmer More's comment at the turn of the century that a study of Hawthorne need not include a discussion of The Blithedale Romance, "the slightest and most coloudess of the novels."

The text is that of the Centenary Edition of the Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne produced at the Ohio State University Center for Textual Studies--a critical unmodernized reconstruction, to which the editors of this Norton Critical Edition have added extensive annotation.

The selection of background and source material for the novel focuses on Hawthorne's visit to Brook Farm in 1841, as reported in his letters and The American Notebooks, as well as on other experiences and observations which later found use in the novel.

"Criticism" includes fifteen contemporary reviews that, remarkably, locate the problems of the novel that later criticism pursues in more detailed and sophisticated fashion. The modern critics include Irving Howe, Roy R. Male, A. N. Kaul, Leo B. Levy, HansJoachim Lang, Philip Rahv, Allan B. Lefcowitz, Barbara F. Lefcowitz, Nina Baym, Hyatt H. Waggoner, Frederick C. Crews,Kelley Griffith, Jr., Louis Auchincloss, James H. Justus, and Kent Bales.

Introduction

The Text of The Blithedale Romance

Backgrounds and Sources

HAWTHORNE'S LIFE AT BROOK FARM

Nathaniel Hawthorne · From His Letters and

    Journals

Ralph Waldo Emerson · From His Journals

HAWTHORNE'S ATTITUDE TOWARD MESMERISM

Nathaniel Hawthorne · From His Letters

HAWTHORNE'S USE OF The American Notebooks IN

  The Blithedale Romance

Nathaniel Hawthorne · From His Journals

  [Old Moodie]

  [Priscilla]

  [Coverdale's Hermitage]

  [A Farewell to the Swine]

  [Views from Coverdale's Window]

  [A Boston Saloon]

  [The Masqueraders]

  [Zenobia's Drowning]

EMERSON'S VIEWS ON REFORM ROMANTIC IDEALISM

    AND BROOK FARM

Ralph Waldo Emerson · Historic Notes of Life

   and Letters in New England

Criticism

  CONTEMPORARY REVIEWS

From the Christian Examiner (September 1852)

From the Westminster Review (October 1852)

From B rownson's Quarterly Review (October 1852)

  From the Athenaeum (July 1852)

  From the Westminster Review (October 1852)

  From the Spectator (July x852)

  From the North British Review (November 1853)

  From Graham' s Magazine (September 1852)

From the Atlantic Monthly (May 186o)

From the New Monthly Magazine (June 1853)

From the Westminster Review (October 1852)

From the American Whig Review (November 1852)

From the American Whig Review (November 1852)

From Blackwood's Magazine (May 1855 )

From the New Monthly Magazine (June 1853)

 MODERN ESSAYS IN CRITICISM

Irving Howe · Hawthorne: Pastoral and Politics

Roy R. Male · The Pastoral Wasteland:

   The Blithedale Romance

A. N. Kaul · [Community and Society]

Leo B. Levy · The Blithedale Romance:

   Hawthorne's "Voyage Through Chaos"

Hans-Joachim Lang · The Blithedale Romance:

   A History of Ideas Approach

Philip Rahv · The Dark Lady of Salem

Barbara F. Lefcowitz and Allan B. Lefcowitz

   Some Rents in the Veil: New Light on

   Priscilla and Zenobia

Nina Baym · The Blithedaie Romance:

   A Radical Reading

Hyatt H. Waggoner · [Fire and Veils: The

   Texture of The Blithedale Romance]

Frederick C. Crews · Turning the Affair into a Ballad

Kelley Grifiith, Jr. · Form in The Blithedale Romance

Louis Auchincloss · The Blithedale Romance:

   A Study of Form and Point of View

James H. Iustus · Hawthorne's Coverdale:

   Character and Art in The Blithedale Romance

Kent Bales · The Allegory and the Radical

   Romantic Ethic of The Blithedale Romance

Bibliography