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.