Angel In The Forest: A Fairy Tale of Two Utopias by Marguerite Young

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Marguerite Young's poetic history of two 19th Century Utopian communities at New Harmony, USA. The first settlement was led by German mystic Father George Rapp, who was influenced by the likes of Jacob Böehme, Philipp Jakob Spener, and Emanuel Swedenborg. He created his Rappite commune of around 800 residents, based upon a scriptural communism . Later they sold the land to Robert Owen, a Welshman described as the father of British socialism who started an experimental socialistic community accompanied by a group of English immigrants, lasting for two years.

'Two Utopias comprehended, within a half-mile square surrounded by a vast wilderness, past, present, and future, however abstrusely the burning of Rome, city planning, explosion of stars, a new calendar, anarchy, a New Jerusalem, repression, expansion, moneyless Eden, exaltation of pearls, a three-hour working day, exaltation of horses, infinite regress, the united nations of earth, the many, the few, Lucifer, lotus-eaters, the falling of autumn leaves, the myths of Narcissus, good dentistry, many fictions. So that such perfectionist orders, which would have excluded much of mistaken life, seem mistaken life itself, with its infinite variety.'

New York: Reynal & Hitchcock. 1941. First edition, second printing. Hardcover. 313pp. Publishers dark-cream cloth with blue spiral illustration, light wear to jacket, crease line down spine with 3cm tear to top edge,, previous owner name and date to front-end paper, text clean. An excellent copy.