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Zusatztext "Hawthorne! in putting this novel together! was engaged in the most serious literary enterprise of his career." --Louis Auchincloss Informationen zum Autor American author Nathaniel Hawthorne (July 4, 1804, to May 19, 1864) wrote both novels and short stories. His works typically touch on history, religion, and morality. His family had a lengthy history in Salem, Massachusetts, where he was born in 1804. Hawthorne enrolled at Bowdoin College in 1821, was chosen for membership in Phi Beta Kappa in 1824, and received his diploma in 1825. Fanshawe, his debut novel, was published in 1828; he later tried to suppress it because he believed it fell short of the caliber of his later works. In magazines, he produced a number of short stories, which he later compiled as Twice-Told Tales in 1837. He proposed to Sophia Peabody the next year. Before getting married to Peabody in 1842, he joined the transcendentalist community of Brook Farm and worked at the Boston Custom House. The pair first settled in Concord, Massachusetts' The Old Manse before relocating to Salem, the Berkshires, and finally The Wayside. Following the release of The Scarlet Letter in 1850, a number of other novels followed. Prior to their 1860 return to Concord, Hawthorne and his family traveled to Europe as part of a political appointment as a consul. He passed away on May 19, 1864. Klappentext The Blithedale Romance, considered one of Hawthorne's major novels, explores the limitations of human nature set against an experiment in communal living. From mesmerism to illicit love, The Blithedale Romance represents one of Hawthorne's best and most sharply etched works, one that Henry James called his "brightest" and "liveliest" novel, and that Roy Male, acclaimed Americanist scholar, said is "one of the most underrated works in American fiction." This Modern Library Paperback Classics edition is set from the definitive Ohio State University Press Centenary edition of the novel. I Old Moodie The evening before my departure for Blithedale, I was returning to my bachelor-apartments, after attending the wonderful exhibition of the Veiled Lady, when an elderly-man of rather shabby appearance met me in an obscure part of the street. “Mr. Coverdale,” said he, softly, “can I speak with you a moment?” As I have casually alluded to the Veiled Lady, it may not be amiss to mention, for the benefit of such of my readers as are unacquainted with her now forgotten celebrity, that she was a phenomenon in the mesmeric line; one of the earliest that had indicated the birth of a new science, or the revival of an old humbug. Since those times, her sisterhood have grown too numerous to attract much individual notice; nor, in fact, has any one of them ever come before the public under such skilfully contrived circumstances of stage-effect, as those which at once mystified and illuminated the remarkable performances of the lady in question. Now-a-days, in the management of his “subject,” “clairvoyant,” or “medium,” the exhibitor affects the simplicity and openness of scientific experiment; and even if he profess to tread a step or two across the boundaries of the spiritual world, yet carries with him the laws of our actual life, and extends them over his preternatural conquests. Twelve or fifteen years ago, on the contrary, all the arts of mysterious arrangement, of picturesque disposition, and artistically contrasted light and shade, were made available in order to set the apparent miracle in the strongest attitude of opposition to ordinary facts. In the case of the Veiled Lady, moreover, the interest of the spectator was further wrought up by the enigma of her identity, and an absurd rumor (probably set afloat by the exhibitor, and at one time very prevalent) that a beautiful young lady, of family and fortune, was enshrouded within the misty drapery of the veil. It was white, with somewhat of a subdued s...
