Nathaniel Hawthorne spent seven disillusioning months at the Brook Farm commune shoveling manure and losing his investment, and then insisted this novel was not about it — convincing no one. A minor poet joins a farm of high-minded reformers and finds himself forever watching rather than living: a magnetic agitator, a woman who worships him, and a girl with a secret no one will name. The narrator's own coldness is the true subject. This edition presents the complete and unabridged novel, newly typeset and illustrated with 43 full-page color plates.