MASQUERIER, Lewis.

£1,000 · Offered by Peter Harrington · No longer available

Sociology: First edition of this proto-anarchist publication, outlining a vision of American society moved out of the cities and re-organized into self-governing homesteads in the countryside.Masquerier began as a printer and lawyer before taking up radical ideas, promoting the theories of Robert Owen and applying to join the "Communist Society" sponsored by the British utopian Goodwyn Barnby. He proposed many radical schemes, finding evidence in the Bible for the coming fulfilment of his prophecies. Although his impact on his contemporaries outside radical circles was limited - the fact the book is self-published is telling - he nonetheless "represents yet another American reformer working to fulfil biblical prophecies by dissolving the New Jerusalem throughout the expansive continent. His work signals that Robert Owen's dream of garden enclaves had been naturalized, if also carefully qualified, by an American political visionary of real, if temporary, influence" (Nathaniel Robert Walker, Victorian Visions of Surburban Utopia, 2020, p. 249).The chief part of the text is followed by several separately paginated appendixes, including an outspoken poem on the Old and New Testaments, a plan for universal alphabet and language; comparison with other copies shows some variation in these appendixes.

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