So I found the book Salem, Transcendentalism, and Hawthorne by Alfred Rosa in the library, which is quite the find since my research topic is dealing with Transcendentalism's role in Blithedale. I found out a lot of information about the contact that Hawthorne had with prominent people in the movement. For one thing, he lived in Salem, Massachusetts which rivaled Boston as a center for Transcendentalist thought. In fact, Hawthorne was in charge of booking speakers at the Salem Lyceum and was frequently requesting Thoreau and Emerson to lecture there. But Hawthorne wasn't necessarily a follower of the movement. He definitely respected the Transcendentalists (many of his friends were Transcendentalists, including his wife's sister), but he did not agree with their stance on prison reform and saw himself somewhere between the extremes of Transcendentalist and popular writer. Prison reform definitely shows up in Blithedale in Hollingsworth's character. Rosa quotes the words of John Erskine from 1918 (very, very old school), "He was really the detached observer, that other Transcendentalists thought they were(14)." I thought this quote was very interesting considering all of our talk about Coverdale as a passive observer. All in all, this is a very handy book that I still have to discover more.
Peace, Love, and Happiness-
Nick G
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Oh cool, you found some stuff on prison reform! I also found some accounts of the different types of prison reform and why Hawthorne didn't like them. Even though people, like Hollingsworth, wanted to try to reform criminals etc...they did not stop crime at its source. Also, that's interesting that prison reform and transcendentalism are related - I'll have to look into this.
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