Victor Considerant and the Rise and Fall of French Romantic Socialism

Abstract

Jonathan F. Beecher's accomplished study is both a lively life story of one of the most engaging figures among the French romantic intellectuals of the 1840s and a compelling chronicle of early French socialism. Victor Considerant (1808-1893), a follower of the great utopian thinker Charles Fourier, played an important role in the creation of a Fourierist movement and the development of socialist journalism. In the process of conveying a rich understanding of Considerant's life, Beecher traces the rise and fall of French romantic socialism and demonstrates how the utopian visions of thinkers such as Charles Fourier came to inspire a whole generation of young radicals and reformers not only in France but also in Dostoevky's Russia and in the America of Horace Greeley and Margaret Fuller. He paints a vivid portrait of a particularly important period of European intellectual history and gives his readers insight into the experience of a generation of thinkers and political activists. This comprehensive history will become the definitive work on Victor Considerant, and - along with Beecher's classic study of Fourier - a major contribution to the history of French socialism in the nineteenth century.