BROOK FARM
The founder of Brook Farm, George Ripley (1802-1880), was one of Unitarianism’s most promising ministers, and the farm at West Roxbury, Massachusetts began as a product of the transcendentalist movement and a showplace for Christian socialism. The commune had more than 120 members at its highest point and was widely regarded as an intellectual center. After four years of existence, however, the members changed its purpose to that of a Fourierist phalanx.

Elizabeth P. Peabody, “Plan of the West Roxbury Community, The Dial: A Magazine for Literature, Philosophy, and Religion. 7, January, 1842.

Plan of the West Roxbury Community
Elizabeth P. Peabody expresses Brook Farm’s intention clearly in this follow-up to an article on ”A Glimpse of Christ’s Idea of Society” in the previous issue of the Transcendentalists’ magazine edited by Margaret Fuller:

In order to live a religious and moral life worthy of the name, they feel it is necessary to come out in some degree from the world and to form themselves into a community of property, so far as to exclude competition and the ordinary rules of trade; --while they reserve sufficient private property, or the means of obtaining it, for all purposes of independence, and isolation at will. . . . A true life, although it aims beyond the highest star, is redolent of the healthy earth.

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