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Angel in the Forest

A Fairy Tale of Two Utopias
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Brief Description
Angel in the Forest is Marguerite Young's fascinating chronicle of two attempts to establish utopian communities in nineteenth-century America. In it, she recounts the strange tale of New Harmony, Indiana, a community originally founded in 1814 by the German mystic Father George Rapp, who wanted to... Read More
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Angel in the Forest is Marguerite Young's fascinating chronicle of two attempts to establish utopian communities in nineteenth-century America.

In it, she recounts the strange tale of New Harmony, Indiana, a community originally founded in 1814 by the German mystic Father George Rapp, who wanted to apply Scriptural communism to daily life in order to bring about the New Jerusalem. It was sold in 1825 to Robert Owen, the father of British socialism who, with a group of English immigrants, implemented his own theories for a perfect community, this time based on rationalism.

Both experiments failed, but Young finds in both a distinctively American yearning for utopia, which continues to characterise the American spirit to this day: a tradition of faith and folly can be traced from Owen's New Moral World to George Bush's New World Order.

Written with the same elegance, wit, and lyric beauty that distinguishes her fiction, Angel in the Forest was widely praised upon its first publication in 1945. This edition includes Mark Van Doren's introduction to Scribner's 1966 reprint.

Series: Dalkey Archive Essentials

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  • Angel in the Forest
    Angel in the Forest is Marguerite Young's fascinating chronicle of two attempts to establish utopian communities in nineteenth-century America. In it, she recounts the strange tale of New Harmony, Indiana, a community originally founded in 1814 by the German mystic Father George Rapp, who wanted to apply Scriptural communism to daily life in order to bring about the New Jerusalem....
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Book Details

INFORMATION

ISBN: 9781628975512

Publisher: Dalkey Archive Press

Format: Paperback / softback

Date Published: 26 December 2024

Country: United States

Imprint: Dalkey Archive Press

Illustration: Illustrations

Contributors:

  • Introduction by Mark Van Doren

Audience: General / adult

DIMENSIONS

Width: 152.0mm

Height: 228.0mm

Weight: 250g

Pages: 331

About the Author

Marguerite Young (1908-1995), born and reared in Indiana, moved to New York City in the 1940s, where she lived for the rest of her life. She is the author of two books of poetry, a collection of essays entitled Inviting the Muses, and two novels, Miss MacIntosh, My Darling (also a Dalkey Archive Essential) and Harp Song for a Radical.

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