England’s Lost Eden: Adventures in a Victorian Utopia. Philip Hoare

      ENGLAND’S LOST EDEN

       Adventures in a Victorian Utopia

      PHILIP HOARE

       DEDICATION

      For Mark

      CONTENTS

       Cover

       Title Page

Dedication

Map

Prologue: A place of royal death

PART I: Green and Pleasant Land

1 A Voice in the Wilderness

      Into the forest; Mary Ann’s life & visions in Suffolk; the Girlingites’ debut

2 Turning the World Upside-Down

      Bunhill Fields & the Camisards; Ann Lee & the Shakers; American utopias

3 Human Nature

      Elder Evans & James Burns; Human Nature & spirit photography; the mission to Mount Lebanon

PART II O Clouds Unfold!

4 The Walworth Jumpers

      Sects, spiritualism, & Swedenborg; Mary Ann at the Elephant & Castle

       5 The New Forest Shakers

      Hordle, the Girlingites’ heyday; Peterson & his mesmeric experiments

       6 The Dark and Trying Hour

      Eviction & despair; Mary Ann examined on the condition of her mind

      

       PART III Arrows of Desire

       7 The Sphere of Love

      Broadlands & the Cowpers; Rossetti & Beata Beatrix; Myers & Gurney; the Broadlands Conferences

       8 The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century

      Ruskin & the Spiritualists, the Guild of St George & Fors Clavigera; Brantwood

       9 The Names of Butterflies

      Rose La Touche, Broadlands & the spirits

       PART IV The Countenance Divine

       10 This Muddy Eden

      Isaac Batho’s mission; Auberon Herbert & naked dancing; Julia Wood interned; Girlingites on tour

       11 Mr Peterson’s Tower

      A.T.T.P. & Wm Lawrence, pet medium; the tower rises

       12 The Close of the Dispensation

       The Census; the rival ‘Mother’; Mary Ann’s stigmata

       PART V A New Jerusalem

       13 In Borderland

      Laurence Housman & ‘Jump-to-Glory Jane’; Herbert & Theosophy; Ruskin’s last days; Georgiana & the Wildes; The Sheepfold

       14 Resurgam

      The quest for Mary Ann & her followers; Peterson’s transition

       Epilogue: The forest once more

       Source and Bibliographical Notes

       Index

       Acknowledgements

       About the Author

       Praise

       By the Same Author

       Copyright

       About the Publisher

       MAP

       PROLOGUE

      Early in May 1100 – the exact date is uncertain – the king’s bastard nephew was hunting deer in the New Forest when he was killed by an arrow loosed by one of his own party. Thirty years before, his uncle, the king’s brother, had been gored to death by a stag in the same forest. Both deaths were seen as a judgement on the Norman invaders who had imposed their rule on the land, sweeping aside entire villages to create a vast hunting ground, a kind of royal