1875 Eyewitness Reports on Utopian Intentional Communities

 

Charles Nordhoff, The Communistic Societies of the United States; From Personal Visit and Observation: Including Detailed Accounts of the Economists, Zoarites, Shakers, the Amana, Oneida, Bethel, Aurora, Icarian, and Other Existing Societies, Their Religious Creeds, Social Practices, Numbers, Industries, and Present Condition. 1875. Harper & Brothers: New York. Cloth-bound Hardcover Quarto, 439 pp. First Edition. w/Inscription, marginalia, and tipped-in hand-written review/reflection on text by Charles Remus[?] May, Oct. 1915.

 

This massive compendium of mid-19th Century utopian experiments covers around a dozen socialist intentional communities active in the 1870s, with remarkable detail and fair-mindedness. Though not himself a socialist, Nordhoff visited each of the communes described and discusses them with respect and objectivity, quoting from their own documents and publications at length. There are etchings of each community based on eyewitness sketches, among other illustrations. The index contains ample thematic entries to facilitate comparative research. 

Though I have yet to find any information on the book's early 20th century owner Charles Remus May (I'm not certain about my scan of his middle name), the book was clearly of pressing interest to him; the book contains his marginal brackets and markings throughout, and a tipped in handwritten reflection on the text. These appear to reveal a highly devout, though open-minded, progressive Christian reformer both intrigued and wary of the various experiments described. His commentary reads: 

If a group of good people has a good influence on us, why not constant communication with the All good - God? This depends on our[or one] mental[or mortal] idea of God. I have seen some people who were in constant communication with their[?] God, who were not any better than their neighbors. Is God but a reflection of our own striving[?] or ideal? The God of the Testament is a positive Being whom we should[?] imitate, not form one for ourselves.

 

Fluxus and Ethnopoetics: Jerome Rothenberg, 'Ritual: A Book of Primitive Rites and Events' on Great Bear/Something Else Press (1966)

Jerome Rothenberg, Ritual: A Book of Primitive Rites and Events. 1966. Something Else Press / Great Bear Pamphlet Series: New York. Octavo Paperback, 16 pp.

This chapbook, published in the Great Bear pamphlet series by Emmett Williams' legendary Something Else Press, embodies some of Rothenberg's early forays into ethnopoetics in the context of the Fluxus movement, as he presents a collection of indigenous ceremonies and communal rituals from around the world in the form of Fluxus-style event scores. Rothenberg is one of the only people (in addition to Claes Oldenberg) with Great Bear pamphlets listed in the notice on the back who was not a primary member of the Fluxus network.

1965 Prospectus & Pre-Promotion for Kenneth Patchen's BUT EVEN SO

Kenneth Patchen & Jonathan Williams, Prospectus Packet for "But Even So" (Jargon #50). Undated [1965]. Nantahala Foundation/Jargon Society: Highlands, North Carolina. Mailed from poet-publisher Jonathan Williams to poet Robert Hawley.

 

Includes:

1. Softcover Octavo-sized Pamphlet Letterpress-printed on double-folded fine paper, with affixed fragment of Plate 1 of forthcoming book, 4 pp.
2. Two advance-order cards for But Even So (unfilled)
3. Jargon Letterhead Envelope, hand-addressed to Robert Hawley, stamped & postmarked from Dillard, GA, July 21, 1965.
   

This packet of small-press ephemera, though later than most of the archive, ties together several important literary descendants of the communities it is focused on. This is an entire postal packet containing an advance-order prospectus (vital in order to fund the initial print-runs of most underground work prior to the photocopier) of a forthcoming work by groundbreaking and highly obscure American avant-garde visual writer, novelist, and musician. It was sent by its publisher, the poet Jonathan Williams, who had played an important role in the experimental Black mountain College and continued to work in the region. Its recipient was his fellow Black Mountain alumnus, the editor of Oyez Press Robert Hawley.

Inscribed 1870 Novel by the Leftist writer, activist, & politician Robert Dale Owen!

Robert Dale Owen, Beyond the Breakers: A Story of the Present Day. 1870. Lippincott: Philadelphia. Cloth-bound Hardcover Octavo, 274 pp. Inscribed by the Author to Albert G. Browne.

Robert Dale Owen was the son of the Welsh utopian socialist Robert Owen, and helped his father to establish the utopian industrial experiment at New Harmony, Indiana in 1825, running its day-to-day operations. After the experiment dissolved, he edited various Socialist newspapers, advocated public education, and was active in Abolitionist, Feminist, and Spiritualist networks. His activism led to politics, and he served in the House of Representatives for Indiana, helped found the Smithsonian, and during the Civil War worked in the predecessor of the Freedman's Bureau.

This quite deteriorated copy of Owen's novel Beyond the Breakers is inscribed by Owen: "Presented to / Mr. & Mrs. Albert G. Browne, / By their friend / the Author. / March, 1870." Browne, who had been the U.S. Treasury Department's representative in the occupied Carolinas during the Civil War (here's a link to the archive of his papers), later donated book to Order of the Portal, Dowling Building, Malden Massachusetts, according to the stamp; I have found no other trace of this organisation.

Satirical Poems from 1653

 Charles Vion d'Alibray, Oeuvres Poetiqes [Parts 3-6, Lacking Title Page]. 1653. Publisher's Imprint Missing. Hardcover 16-mo in original 17th-century binding. Inscribed and dated by Nicholas Penel, 1660 Paris, with list of books.

Charles Vion d'Alibray was a mostly-forgotten satirical writer of the 17th Century, who frequented many of the literary cabarets of his day and was associated with Saint-Amant, Scarron, and others later championed by underground Romanticists and Bohemians such as Théophile Gautier in his Grotesques. 

As of the time of its acquisition in March 2024, this was the oldest item in the collection. The original reader of this copy was one Nicolaus Penel, apparently a Paris surgeon. "1600 / Paris" is inscribed on the inside board, and on the title page in Latin: "Nicolaus Penel / Verus se posessor / hicus Libri. anno Domini. / 1666" (Nicolaus Penel / is the true owner / of this book. In the year of the lord / 1666", followed by an unintelligible line, and "hic Liber est Nicolai / Penel" ("This book is Nicolas Penel's".

The flyleaf is covered with a handwritten "Liste des livres" ("BookList") in no easily discernible order, covering a variety of medical, literary, and satirical titles. It is unclear whether this is a list of books owned, sought, etc. and why the list was kept here.

1939 Radical American History Textbook

Allan Seager, They Worked for a Better World. 1939. The People's Library, Macmillan: New York. Hardcover 16-mo with original dust-jacket.

 

This book was published by an imprint called 'The People's Library', ironically a subsidiary or sub-imprint of the Macmillan corporation, or perhaps distributed through it; further research into it is required, but the flavour of its publications can be gleaned from the notices on the back of the dust-jacket. It represents a thinly-veiled attempt to introduce an awareness of the non-conformist tradition into the overwhelmingly reactionary historical education of American youth in the 20th Century. Written in the tone of a standard, triumphalist history textbook of the period, it subtly shifts the emphasis of the 'American spirit' away from benevolent state power to protest and agitation. The roots of American colonisation in the formation of Capitalist joint-stock companies is emphasized, and the effects of this orientation followed through. The story of America since then is organised through biographies of five examples – none of whom ever held state power (no presidents, no war heroes), all of them activists, most of them having served prison terms for their efforts: the Free Thought & anti-racist heretic preacher Roger Williams, the radical polemicist and professional revolutionary Thomas Paine, the Pacifist writer Ralph Waldo Emerson, the Feminist organiser and some-time abolitionist Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and the Socialist theorist & novelist Edward Bellamy. (One would wish for a representative of full-blown abolitionism and one of indigenous resistance as well – but, racial equality is repeatedly promoted in the book and overall, this is not bad at all for a book aimed at mainstream readers in 1939.)

The explicit lesson urged on students is that political freedom depends upon critical thought and continual activism: 

"If you believe that the work these five people did is valuable – and you cannot disbelieve it any more than you can deny your eyes or teeth or anything that is a part of you – then it might be a good idea if Americans looked around and tried to identify the real benefactors of our own time. Admittedly, this is hard to do  . . . From the lives of these five examples, the 'good' seems to mean the right of people to live together with decency, freedom, and dignity. All people, that is. Black or white, Jew or Gentile, Catholic or Protestant, mere humanity should be enough to guarantee the right . . . It would not have been a bad thing to have helped them in their work, and it would not be a bad thing to hunt out, recognize, and help the men and women like them who are living now."

This copy was found in a thrift shop in Roanoke, Virginia.

Anticlerical Propaganda, c.1830-50.

 

Anonymous, Les Moines devoilés ou le jesuit Malagrida (The Monks Unveiled or the Jesuit Malagrida). Undated, c.1830-1850. Etching.

This anonymous print is part of the surge of anti-clericalism that was a massive presence in the Left from the French Revolution until well into the 19th Century. On one side, the movement intersected with a number of progressive movements including free speech, anti-racism, anti-imperialism, socialism and proto-anarchism, and the separation of Church and State. On the other, it quickly became a driving force in a slew of conspiracy theories from both Left- and Right-wing perspectives, and often led to anti-Catholic persecution and fed into growing nationalism and xenophobia in Protestant countries. The  Jesuit order was often considered the epitome of Catholic/Clerical abuse and duplicity.

This print emphasizes the humanitarian aspects of anti-clericalism, while still appealing to more conservative monarchist sentiments. The central figure is labelled as the powerful 18th Century Jesuit Gabriel Malagrida, who who was implicated in a supposed plot on the life of King José I of Portugal, on extremely flimsy evidence; here, he brandishes a manuscript entitled "Hatred of Kings". To his left is Jacques Clémont, the ultra-Catholic assassin of the religiously tolerant King Henry III of France; to his right is unidentified. The bricks of the edifice around Malagrida are inscribed with the products that drove colonial conquest, including tobacco, opium, gum arabic, pears, topaz, porcelain, etc. We see the Jesuit order blamed, with varying degrees of legitimacy, for the destruction of Native American cultures in the conquest and colonial exploitation of Latin America, the enslavement of African and Native American people, the persecution of Heretics, and the overthrow and execution of six European kings.