<ul> <li>This edition includes the following editor&#39;s introduction:<i> </i><i>Nathaniel Hawthorne and Dark Romanticism</i></li></ul><br />First published in 1852, &ldquo;The Blithedale Romance&rdquo; is a novel by American author Nathaniel Hawthorne. Hawthorne&#39;s third novel and third major &quot;romance,&quot; as he called the form. is set in a utopian farming commune based on <i>Brook Farm</i>, an intentional community outside Boston of which Hawthorne was a founding member and where he lived in 1841.<br />The story loosely follows the author&#39;s own experience living on the communal property and dramatizes the conflict between the commune&#39;s ideals and the members&#39; private desires and romantic rivalries.<br />Part mystery, part romance, &ldquo;The Blithedale Romance&rdquo; 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.<br />There&#39;s the leader of the group, the reformer Hollingsworth. Zenobia, a feminist, is the heroine of the story. Then there&#39;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.<br />In the process of getting to know the others, Coverdale becomes disillusioned by their hypocrisies and contradictions...