Marguerite Vivian Young (August 26, 1908 – November 17, 1995) was an American novelist and academic. She is best known for her novel Miss MacIntosh, My Darling.
In her later years, she was known for teaching creative writing and as
a mentor to young authors. "She was a respected literary figure as well
as a cherished Greenwich Village eccentric."[1]
During her lifetime, Young wrote two books of poetry, two historical
studies, one collection of short stories, one novel, and one collection
of essays.[1][2][3][4][5]
The author of Miss MacIntosh, My Darling describes two 19th-century Utopian experiements at New Harmony, USA. In her distinctly vivid prose, Young recreates history and the numerous characters who made it.
She recounts the strange tale of New Harmony, Indiana, a community originally founded in 1814 by the German mystic Father George Rapp, who wanted to apply Scriptural communism to daily life in order to bring about the New Jerusalem. It was sold in 1825 to Robert Owen, the father of British socialism who, with a group of English immigrants, implemented his own theories for a perfect community, this time based on rationalism.
Both experiments failed, but Young finds in both a distinctively American yearning for utopia, which continues to characterize the American spirit to this day: a tradition of faith and folly can be traced from Owen's New Moral World to George Bush's New World Order.
Written with the same elegance, wit, and lyric beauty that distinguishes her fiction, Angel in the Forest was widely praised upon its first publication in 1945. This edition includes Mark Van Doren's introduction to Scribner's 1966 reprint.