The Blithedale Romance (Norton Critical Edition) » (1st Edition)

"Words -- so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them," Nathaniel Hawthorne once reflected. Hawthorne's own words indeed had an undeniable power. Author of The Scarlet Letter and originator of the American short story, Hawthorne left an indelible impression on literature that would influence his fellow writers into the next century.

The text is that of the Centenary Edition of the Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne produced at the Ohio State University Center for Textual Studies—a critical unmodernized reconstruction—to which the editors of this Norton Critical Edition have added extensive annotation.