Abstract
Visitors to the villages often broadcast cautionary tales in late-eighteenth and nineteenth-century publications, tales that are remarkably similar to those of many authors of novels and short stories that appeared concurrently. Unfortunately, similar stories whose authors purport them to be historical novels continued to be disseminated in the twentieth century and indeed into the twenty-first century, well after most Shaker villages had closed. Thus a remarkably unvarying voice of anti-Shakerism has been kept alive for over two hundred years, a voice that threatens to obscure the legacy of the Shaker success in communal living.
Date
10-1-2019
Volume
13
Number
3-4
First Page
148
Last Page
187
Journal Title
American Communal Societies Quarterly
ISSN
1939-473X