Publications

Christopher Clark and Kerry W. Buckley, eds., Letters from an American Utopia: The Stetson Family and the Northampton Association, 1843-1847 (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2004) "The newly discovered Stetson letters answer a historian's prayer. What a joy to look over the family's shoulders into the everyday life of the Northampton Association! For the first time we can see Sojourner Truth as a flesh-and-blood person enmeshed in her own family and the Association's activities, not in retrospect, but, as it were, in real time."- Nell Irvin Painter, author of Sojourner Truth: A Life, A Symbol "Letters from an American Utopia" [is] a remarkable collection of writings from a family that lived there. Boston Globe ''Letters from an American Utopia'' allows those interested in Northampton's past, in this anniversary year, to let voices sound out of the wilderness of time, now two centuries distant. Daily Hampshire Gazette In 1842, a group of radical abolitionists and social reformers established the Northampton Association of Education and Industry, a utopian community in western Massachusetts organized around a collectively owned and operated silk mill. Members sought to challenge the prevailing social attitudes of their day by creating a society in which "the rights of all are equal without distinction of sex, color or condition, sect or religion." This volume brings together a remarkable set of seventy-five letters written by the members of the Stetson family, who belonged to the Association for almost four years. Discovered recently by a family descendant, the correspondence documents the thoughts and experiences of ordinary people struggling to uphold common ideals in demanding circumstances. Hardcover, 284 pages, illustrations, index $34.95

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