# Marie Howland > Mediated Wiki article. Canonical URL: https://mediated.wiki/source/Marie_Howland > Markdown URL: https://mediated.wiki/source/Marie_Howland.md > Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_Howland > Source revision: 1352531828 > License: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) **Marie Stevens Case Howland** (1836 – September 18, 1921) was an American [feminist](/source/Feminism) writer of the nineteenth century, who was closely associated with the [utopian socialist](/source/Utopian_socialist) movements of her era.[1][2][3][4] Marie Stevens had to leave school and support her younger sister when their father died in 1847; at the age of twelve she went to work in a cotton mill in [Lowell, Massachusetts](/source/Lowell,_Massachusetts). In the ensuing decade she moved to New York City, graduated from the New York Normal College and became a teacher, and married a radical lawyer, Lyman Case. She lived with Case at [Stephen Pearl Andrews](/source/Stephen_Pearl_Andrews)'s co-operative Unity House at 17 Stuyvesant St., where she met her second husband, [Edward Howland](/source/Edward_Howland), a financer, writer, and editor for [The Saturday Press,](/source/The_Saturday_Press,) America's first Bohemian journal, a journal Marie would contribute to, also.[5][6] Consistent with Marie and Lyman's [Free-Love](/source/Free-Love)-Leaguer philosophy, Lyman noticed the "Passional Attraction" between Marie and Edward, and offered Marie a divorce so the two could be free to love, and so they divorced and Marie and Edward were married.[7][8][9] Howland was noteworthy in that she "actually lived in three utopian communities of very different size and denomination...."[10] In 1864 she and Howland lived for a time at the [Fourierist](/source/Charles_Fourier) "Familistère" established in [Guise](/source/Guise) by the French industrialist and reformer [Jean-Baptiste Godin](/source/Jean-Baptiste_Godin). Howland later used the experience as the subject of her best-known work, *Papa's Own Girl* (1874), a novel about an American father and daughter living in a comparable fictional establishment in New England. The heroine, Clara Forest, goes on to live a satisfying life as an independent businesswoman. The book was controversial but also a popular success in its day. Later editions altered the title to *The Familistère*. The Howlands returned to the United States after the end of the [American Civil War](/source/American_Civil_War), and in 1868 they settled in [Hammonton, New Jersey](/source/Hammonton,_New_Jersey), where they were part of a circle of radical thinkers and activists in Hammonton and [Vineland](/source/Vineland,_New_Jersey). (Both towns were another type of planned community, created by a capitalist promoter instead of utopian idealists.)[11] Howland was an active journalist throughout her career; she also translated Godin's *Solutions sociales* (1871) into English as *Social Solutions* (1886). Howland was an admirer and supporter of [Edward Bellamy](/source/Edward_Bellamy) after the publication of his famous *[Looking Backward](/source/Looking_Backward)* in 1888; conversely, Howland's work has been cited as a possible influence on Bellamy.[12] In the late 1880s and the 1890s Howland was associated with [Albert Kimsey Owen](/source/Albert_Kimsey_Owen)'s planned community, the [Topolobampo colony](/source/Topolobampo_(colony)), or "Pacific City" in [Topolobampo](/source/Topolobampo), Mexico.[13][14] Howland edited the community's periodical. She left there when the experiment ended in 1894. (Her husband had died in 1890.) Howland spent her final years in one more planned community, [Fairhope](/source/Fairhope), founded on [Mobile Bay](/source/Mobile_Bay) in Alabama in 1894.[15][16] She became the town's librarian and wrote for its newspaper. She died on September 18, 1921.[17] ## References 1. [Mari Jo Buhle](/source/Mari_Jo_Buhle), *Women and the American Left: A Guide to Sources*, New York, G. K. Hall, 1983; p. 45. 1. R. C. S. Trahair, *Utopia and Utopians*, Westport, CT, Greenwood Publishing, 1999; p. 192. 1. Blake, Holly Jacklyn (2015). "Marie Howland—19th-Century Leader for Women's Economic Independence". *American Journal of Economics and Sociology*. **74** (5): 878–1190. [doi:10.1111/ajes.12128](https://doi.org/10.1111/ajes.12128) 1. Hayden, Dolores (1978). "Two Utopian Feminists and Their Campaigns for Kitchenless Houses". *Signs*. **4** (2): 274–290. [doi:10.1086/493607](https://doi.org/10.1086/493607). [S2CID 143860567](https://api.semanticscholar.org/CorpusID:143860567) 1. Crane, Mark (2025). *The New York Saturday Press Omnibus Edition*. funsub books. p. 508. 1. Trahair, p. 191. 1. Crane, Mark (2025). *The New York Saturday Press Omnibus Edition*. funsub books. p. 508. 1. [https://pfaffs.web.lehigh.edu/node/54188](https://pfaffs.web.lehigh.edu/node/54188) 1. [https://read.dukeupress.edu/american-literature/article-abstract/87/4/681/5090/The-Marriage-Trap-in-the-Free-Love-Novel-and-Queer?redirectedFrom=fulltext](https://read.dukeupress.edu/american-literature/article-abstract/87/4/681/5090/The-Marriage-Trap-in-the-Free-Love-Novel-and-Queer?redirectedFrom=fulltext) 1. Nan Bowman Albinski, "Utopia Reconsidered: Women Novelists and Nineteenth-Century Utopian Visions," *Signs*, Vol. 13 No. 4 (Summer 1988), pp. 830-41; see p. 838. 1. Richard T. T. Forman, *Pine Barrens: Ecosystem and Landscape*, Piscataway, NJ, Rutgers University Press, 1998; p. 17. 1. Daphne Patai, *Looking Backward, 1988–1888: Essays on Edward Bellamy*, Amherst, MA, [University of Massachusetts Press](/source/University_of_Massachusetts_Press), 1988; pp. 72, 74, 81, 85-7. 1. Suzanne Keller, *Building for Women*, Lexington, MA, Lexington Books, 1981; pp. 7-14. 1. Trahair, p. 301. 1. Paul M. Gaston, *Women of Fairhope*, Athens, GA, University of Georgia Press, 1984; pp. 19-65. 1. Trahair, pp. 129-30. 1. ["Marie Howland Passes On"](https://www.newspapers.com/clip/41642929/marie_howland_passes_on/). *Fairhope Courier*. 1921-09-23. Retrieved 2020-01-03. – via Newspapers.com. --- Adapted from the Wikipedia article [Marie Howland](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_Howland) by Wikipedia contributors ([contributor history](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_Howland?action=history)). Available under [Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/). Changes may have been made.