A disillusioned narrator recalls a failed utopian farming commune and the magnetic, doomed women at its center. Hawthorne's novel drawn from his Brook Farm days.
Books mentioned in The Blithedale Romance (4)
Essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson: “I read interminably in Mr. Emerson's Essays, "The Dial," Carlyle's works, George Sand's romances”
The Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser: “Shepherds of Arcadia, and allegoric figures from the "Faerie Queen," were oddly mixed up with these.”
Utopia by Thomas More: “I ventured to whisper "Utopia," which, however, was unanimously scouted down, and the proposer very harshly maltreated, as if he had intended a latent satire.”
Tam o' Shanter by Robert Burns: “a horned and long-tailed gentleman (in whom I recognized the fiendish musician erst seen by Tam O'Shanter) tuned his fiddle”