8 h 35 minAudiobook14 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 if a perfect community cannot cure jealousy, pride, or love for the wrong person?
Miles Coverdale leaves his comfortable rooms in Boston to join Blithedale, a farming community built on shared work and shared rewards. A snowstorm greets the dreamers. Soon, planting, hoeing, and hauling test their hopes for a better life. In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s romance, changing the world proves harder than making a plan.
Coverdale watches brilliant, wealthy Zenobia, shy seamstress Priscilla, and determined reformer Hollingsworth draw close. Each brings desires that shared labor cannot settle. Hollingsworth wants Blithedale to serve his plan for reforming criminals. Priscilla brings an unexplained past. And Coverdale, curious about everyone, does not always reveal what he feels.
What you’ll discover
- Dreams meet stubborn soil Follow hopeful idealists into daily farm work that leaves little room for lofty talk.
- A woman in bloom Meet Zenobia, whose wit, strong will, and longing for love make her a compelling presence.
- The pull of obsession Watch Hollingsworth’s single purpose test the place of other people in his vision of good.
- Secrets behind quiet faces Trace the questions surrounding Priscilla, a nervous newcomer whose past remains difficult to read.
- A witness worth questioning Look beyond Coverdale’s observations and weigh the feelings he keeps out of plain sight.
Who will love it
For readers who love American fiction of the nineteenth century, stories about idealism gone wrong, and unreliable narrators. Its utopian farm brings together tangled loves, jealousy, reform, and obsession.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- A snowstorm greets the dreamers
- Four people draw the whole book together
- Honest work humbles the poets
- One idea can swallow a good man
- Priscilla and the shadow of the Veiled Lady
- Coverdale watches but never quite acts
- A masquerade in the woods
- What the book says about utopia and love
- A romance told by an unreliable witness
Who’s who
- Miles CoverdaleA modest poet who joins the farm and tells the story, curious about everyone and slow to reveal his own feelings.
- ZenobiaA brilliant, wealthy, strong-willed woman and writer, admired by the community, who wears a fresh flower in her hair and longs for a deep love.
- HollingsworthA former blacksmith turned philanthropist, devoted to reforming criminals, who draws others toward his plan with great force of will.
- PriscillaA frail, shy seamstress who arrives at the farm with a mysterious past and grows stronger in the country air.
- WesterveltA smooth, sinister man with a gold-headed cane, linked to mesmerism, who seems to hold a hidden claim over the others.
- Old MoodieA shabby, anxious old man who asks Coverdale about Zenobia and seems tied to the secrets of the young women.
- Silas FosterThe blunt, practical farmer who teaches the idealists how to work the land and has little patience for lofty talk.
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- Audiobook
- 8 h 35 min, complete, read by Lucas Linden.
- 15-minute summary
- The key ideas in about 14 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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Il romanzo di Blithedale
by Nathaniel Hawthorne · 1852
Miles Coverdale joins a utopian farm where private desires threaten the dream of a fairer world.
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From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1 of 9
A snowstorm greets the dreamers
The story opens as Coverdale looks back on his time at Blithedale. He has left his comfortable rooms in Boston, and he travels out in April to join a community built on shared work and shared fruits. The weather does not cooperate. A snowstorm covers the fields, and the new arrivals reach the old farmhouse cold and tired.
The founders hope to prove that people can live without the pressure of money and rank. Scholars, writers, and reformers will take up hoes and pitchforks, and in return they will gain health, freedom, and a fairer way to live together. Coverdale shares these hopes, at least in part. He is a man who likes to feel that he is doing something useful, and he is tired of the narrow life of a city bachelor.
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What is The Blithedale Romance about?
It follows a poet, Miles Coverdale, who joins a farming community built on shared work and ideals. There he becomes entangled with the proud Zenobia, the reformer Hollingsworth, and the fragile Priscilla, as hopes for a perfect society meet jealousy and obsession.
Is Blithedale a real place?
No, Blithedale is invented. But Hawthorne based it on Brook Farm in Massachusetts, a real utopian community he joined in 1841 and left after several months. He said the book was not a portrait of that place.
Who is Zenobia in The Blithedale Romance?
Zenobia is a wealthy, striking woman and writer who speaks for the rights of women. She is warm, proud, and passionate, and she is at the center of the book's tangled feelings. Readers have long debated whether she was modeled on a real woman.
The author
Nathaniel Hawthorne
1804–1864 · American novelist
Nathaniel Hawthorne was an American novelist and short-story writer born in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1804. He lived in Massachusetts and served as a United States consul in Liverpool, England. He wrote The Scarlet Letter (1850) and The House of the Seven Gables (1851). He died in Plymouth, New Hampshire, in 1864.
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