The Blithedale Romance

The Blithedale Romance (1852) is a novel by American author Nathaniel Hawthorne. It is the third major "romance", as he called the form. Its setting is a utopian farming commune based on Brook Farm, of which Hawthorne was a founding member and where he lived in 1841. The novel dramatizes the conflict between the commune's ideals and the members' private desires and romantic rivalries.