Angel in the Forest

A Fairy Tale of Two Utopias

Marguerite Young, Mark Van Doren

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Paperback

Forthcoming
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English

Dalkey Archive Press
19 February 2025

History of the Americas; Modern history to 20th century: c 1700 to c 1900; Social & cultural history; Socialism & left-of-centre democratic ideologies

Series: Dalkey Archive Essentials

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 characterize 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 Forestwas widely praised upon its first publication in 1945. This edition includes Mark Van Doren's introduction to Scribner's 1966 reprint.

By: Marguerite Young
Introduction by: Mark Van Doren
Imprint: Dalkey Archive Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 228mm, Width: 152mm,
ISBN: 9781628975512
ISBN 10: 1628975512
Series: Dalkey Archive Essentials
Pages: 331
Publication Date: 19 February 2025
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

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.

Reviews for Angel in the Forest: A Fairy Tale of Two Utopias

When a poet chooses to write history facts gain in power and in dimension. Young is a meticulous scholar, but she illumines every description and every character with her laser light of significance. Her facts radiate wit and irony and are incarnated in human beings. -Anais Nin, Los Angeles Times One of my very treasured books . . . the best book I know on the subject of the early primitive religious cults. I hope it will get the attention it deserves. -Katherine Anne Porter