Utopian Essays
South Bend, Indiana: Published by the author, 1923. First Edition. Three essays (The Flowers of Democracy, For “Sports” Only and The Powers That Be) proposing new social forms, conventions and movements to help individuals flourish and self-actualize. The old structure based on aristocracy, enslavement, and exploitation must be replaced with a “pure democracy.”
The author was born Johannes John Halvorsen Veiby in Norway in 1860. He first appears in newspaper accounts in 1893 as a traveling photographer establishing a gallery in Oregon. By 1910 he was living in South Bend, Indiana, working at a match factory and publishing radical essays, plays, and pamphlets. His first book, Our Sunday (1906) was published under the pseudonym Thorlief. He then published Beyond Marriage (1914), a pamphlet that proposed new types of marriages analogous to the construction of different types of houses, which at least at the time was banned from the mail. This was followed by The Utopian Way (1917), a socialist pamphlet, “Solon, Solon!” (1918), Direct Action: A One-Act Play (1920), Utopian Essays (1923), and Jingo (1927). By 1930, Veiby, a long-time unmarried Elks Lodge member, retired to the Elks National Home in Bedford, Virginia where he died in 1949.
8vo. Green cloth boards titled in gilt to spine, 135 p., dust jacket. Book is in near fine condition; dust jacket is edge worn and rubbed with minor chipping to spine ends, very good overall. Item #13708
Price: $150.00