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Brook Farm: The Dark Side of Utopia. By Sterling F. Delano. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2004. 428 pp. $29.95 (hardcover).
The history of Brook Farm (1841-1847), one of the more memorable Utopian communities to emerge in the 1840s, is of enduring interest to scholars. As Sterling F. Delano notes, of all the authors who have commented on the history of this Transcendentalist community, all tended to emphasize the idyllic. None dealt with the "dark side of utopia," or what the author calls its "persistent struggle, even from the earliest days of the community's existence, to prevent it from going under" (xi). As the title of his book implies, Delano focuses on the often overlooked aspects of communal life to provide an account that is both revisionist and highly readable.
In the first tiiree chapters, Delano sketches the beginnings of Brook Farm. George Ripley's resignation from Boston's Purchase Street Church and his attendance at the Groton Convention with his friend and fellow Transcendentalist, Theodore Parker, are significant signposts. It is at the Groton Convention, in the summer of 1 840, where Ripley decides he must give voice to his social conscience by forging a community apart from the "pressirre of our competitive institutions" (34).
In the spring...