Millicent Fawcett

Tales of Political Economy

      Macmillan, 1874. 130pp small octavo. Decorated cloth with gilt lettering to backstrip. Library cancel. Slight wear to backstrip. * First edition. "Four connected stories: 'The Srimats, ' 'The Shipwrecked Sailors, ' 'Isle Pleasant' and 'The Islanders' Experience of Foreign Trade. ' The first is a lost race utopia concerning a small island in the East Indies populated by descendants of the Dutch who have been out of contact with the rest of the world for 200 years. The others are a sequence describing the development of a small utopian community on a small island in the Pacific. "-Locke, A Spectrum of Fantasy Volume III, p. 32. "Island becomes a eutopia through free trade and the free market. "-Sargent, British and American Utopian Literature, 1516-1985, p. 62. These tales, written by noted political activist Millicent Garrett Fawcett (1847-1929), were intended to teach the issues of political economy to students. Not in Bleiler (1948; 1978) or Reginald (1979; 1992). Not in Lewis, Negley or Suvin.