Thomas More coined the word "utopia"-a neologism from the Greek ou, "no or not," and topos, "place"-in his 1516 work "De optimo reipublicae statu deque nova insula Utopia" ("Concerning the highest state of the republic and the new island Utopia" translated most often simply as Utopia). Each movement was greeted with a mix of revulsion and fascination from within the dominant culture, and their experiments were also registered by the nation's literary elite, who, like Sedgwick, could be simultaneously seduced and repulsed by the new utopianism. Owenists, Fourierists, Oneida Perfectionists, Mormons, Amana Inspirationalists, and New Icarians all founded utopian communities in America between 18. The first half of the nineteenth century ushered in a golden era of utopian experimentation. Sedgwick's conflicted assessment of Shaker culture is representative of the mixture of skepticism, abhorrence, and grudging respect extended by Americans to their brethren living in utopian communities during the same period. In the midst of this mostly flattering portrayal, however, she also observes that these communities "have been visited by foreigners and strangers from all parts of our union-all are shocked or disgusted by some of the absurdities of the shaker faith, but none have withheld their admiration from the results of their industry, ingenuity, order, frugality, and temperance" (p. She also praises the members for their "skillful cultivation" and "snow white linen" (p. 178–181) while also engaging in an enthusiastic bustle of industry around looms and the community dairy. In her novel Redwood (1824), Catharine Maria Sedgwick (1789–1867) describes the Shaker villages of Lebanon and Hancock, Massachusetts, as a "religious republic" divided into communal "family" units "whose members are clothed from one store-house, fed at the same board, and perform their domestic worship together" (pp.
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