Angel in the Forest

by Marguerite Young

Angel in the Forest' is excellent history, and at the same time it is a tale of such mysterious force, with stich a rush of riches coming at us all the time, that we must wonder why so few other historians make the utmost of their subjects as she does of hers." So Mark Van Doren writes in his Introduction to this extraordinary book, which is a chronicle of two Utopian experiments carried on in Indiana early in the nineteenth century. Father George Rapp, a German mystic, founded the first of these communities in 1814. What he wanted to bring about was the New Jerusalem, by the application of Scriptural communism to daily life. When Father Rapp gave up in 1825, he sold the land to Robert Owen, the father of British socialism. Owen created New Harmony, a quite different sort of experiment from Father Rapp's, for New Harmony sought to show the way toward a rational order, a New Moral World. In two years it became a debacle. So the account covers only thirteen years and yet, "into that little space of time," as Mark Van Doren says, "Miss Young has packed the essence, as it were, both of man's faith and of his folly." First published in 1945, and long out of print, 'Angel in the Forest' is a work of careful scholarship. More than that, it is a book written with the zest and wit and lyric beauty that belong to Marguerite Young's unique gift. The secret of her power, in Mr. Van Doren's words, is her "unkillable concern with what she calls illusion." That central concern binds this historical study to Marguerite Young's epic novel, 'Miss MacIntosh, My Darling'." -- Publisher.

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