8 h 55 minAudiobook16 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at costPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
What happens when love becomes worship, and the past refuses to stay in shadow?
In Idolatry, his 1874 Gothic romance, Julian Hawthorne, son of Nathaniel Hawthorne, brings love close to danger through obsession, ancient mysteries, and forbidden feeling. The title points toward worship given to the wrong thing: a person, a dream, or an idea that can take hold of the mind.
This Victorian romance belongs to a tradition of old secrets, shadowed settings, and strong passions. Its slower pace gives mood and scenery room to unfold. Hawthorne invites a patient reading, one that makes space for openly expressed feeling and the troubling pull of the past.
What you’ll discover
- Love close to danger Explore a Gothic romance where forbidden love and obsession bring desire into unsettling territory.
- The meaning of idolatry Consider the title's troubling suggestion: devotion can fasten on the wrong person, dream, or idea.
- A past that presses Enter a tradition where ancient mysteries give present feelings a deeper, darker weight.
- Atmosphere worth lingering in Take time with shadowed settings and descriptions that let mood gather around strong emotion.
- Feeling in the open Meet a Victorian style that states passion plainly rather than keeping it carefully hidden.
Who will love it
For readers who love Gothic atmosphere, haunted houses, Egyptian relics and strange romance, and who enjoy a narrator with a wry voice and a story that asks big questions about pride, guilt and love.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- A Magic Ring Tells Its Tale
- A Young Man Arrives with Questions
- A Voice in the Fog
- A Crime and Its Aftermath
- A Princess Seen Across the River
- Legends Behind the Wall
- Gnulemah, Daughter of Fire
- What the Book Is Really About
- How the Story Is Told
Who’s who
- Balder HelwyseA golden-bearded young eye doctor and philosopher who seeks his uncle in America and believes a gifted man can rise toward godhood.
- GnulemahA tall, radiant young woman raised behind a high wall in ancient dress, who thinks the outer world is only shadows and believes in a lamp of life.
- ManethoA graceful, musical Egyptian priest, adopted by Hiero Glyphic, who guards the estate and nurses a long, dark purpose.
- Hiero GlyphicBalder's eccentric uncle, a rich collector of Egyptian relics who has built a strange house and wall on the Hudson.
- SalomeA former gypsy servant, now a scarred and silent nurse, who watches over the household and carries a secret about the past.
- Amos MacGentleThe dreamy, gentle old president of the Beacon Hill Bank, a friend of Balder's father who longs for a lost child to be found.
- Mr. DykeMacGentle's blunt, sharp-memoried clerk, a family man whose firm common sense clashes with his employer's drifting recollections.
Formats and delivery
- eBook
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- Large-print eBook
- The same book in bigger, clearer type, from the first page.
- Audiobook
- 8 h 55 min, complete, read by Lucas Linden.
- 15-minute summary
- The key ideas in about 16 minutes, to read or to hear.
- Paperback
- 6 × 9 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Hardcover
- 6 × 9 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Large print paperback
- 8.5 × 11 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Large print hardcover
- 8.5 × 11 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
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Read and hear Götzendienst in 25 languages and switch at any time. Or read two side by side, paragraph by paragraph: the way to learn a language with a book you love.
Götzendienst
by Julian Hawthorne · 1874
A Boston philosopher with golden hair meets a voice in the fog, and a single night on the Sound changes his life.
Medium level5–10 hours to read25 languages
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From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
A Magic Ring Tells Its Tale
The book opens in a granite hotel in Boston on a night in late May 1853. The narrator invites you to creep into the room of a sleeping guest, Doctor Hiero Glyphic, who lies with his violin case beside the bed. On his finger is an antique diamond ring. Its band is made of two tiny serpents, one of gold and one of black iron, each biting at the stone.
The ring has twenty-seven facets, and each one carries a small character. The large central facet holds all the others joined together, and they form a written history of the ring itself. The narrator uses this device to read the past of the sleeper, though he warns that any movement of the hand can scramble the record. It is a playful way to give the reader what a plain narrator could not know.
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What is Idolatry by Julian Hawthorne about?
It follows Balder Helwyse, a young philosopher and eye doctor, who goes looking for his uncle in America. A night on a fogbound steamer and a visit to a walled estate test his belief in himself and bring him to a mysterious young woman, Gnulemah.
Who is Gnulemah in Idolatry?
Gnulemah is a young woman who has lived all her life behind a high wall, dressed in ancient Egyptian style. She believes the outside world is shadow and that her life depends on a lamp in a temple. Balder falls in love with her.
What does the ring with the two serpents mean?
The antique diamond ring has a gold serpent and a black iron one biting the stone. The narrator calls it a symbol of the soul fought over by good and evil, and the ring also carries a written history of its owners in its facets.
The author
Julian Hawthorne
1846–1934 · American novelist and journalist
Julian Hawthorne was an American novelist and journalist, born in Boston in 1846. He was the son of Nathaniel Hawthorne and Sophia Peabody Hawthorne. He wrote novels, short stories, biographies, and journalism. His novel Idolatry appeared in 1874. He lived in Europe and the United States and died in San Francisco in 1934.
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