Customer Reviews

Robert Owen: Owen of New Lanark and New Harmony

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is especially interesting for the light on his early life and the society of late eighteenth century Manchester. Robert Owen is probably best known as an utopian socialist with worthy but fuzzy ideas. He has always stood out from other early socialists because, as GDH Cole (I think) said he was able to beat the capitalists at their own game when he put his mind to it by running successful businesses. This book shows how one of seven children of a Welsh saddler could rise in the world of the early steam engines and factories. I was fascinated by his life in his twenties in Manchester, where he was friendly with Dalton (the originator of the atom) and lent money to Fulton (the inventor of the steamship) and discussed religion with Coleridge. The later life is already well known. The narrative livens up again describing travelling west in the United States. I should have liked more explanation of how he acquired his technical skills after what sounds like an apprenticeship only in retail trade. Some of the financial transactions remain obscure. The author pursues a Robinson Crusoe metaphor at puzzling length. I thought he used too many lengthy quotations from dully written sources (including Owen's own flat and boring autobiography). I should like to have known more of what finally became of New Lanark, Ormiston and New Harmony (where Donnachie apparently met Owen family descendants) and about the birth control ideas and accusations of sexual immorality. Nice illustrations. On the whole this is more a scholarly biography than one that can be read through for entertainment.