Education
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, whom she later divorced.
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, whom she later divorced.
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, and in 1868 they settled in Hammonton, New Jersey, where they were part of a circle of radical thinkers and activists in Hammonton and Vineland.
(Both towns were another type of planned community, created by a capitalist promoter instead of utopian idealists) 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 after the publication of his famous Looking Backward in 1888. Conversely, Howland"s work has been cited as a possible influence on Bellamy.
In the late 1880s and the 1890s Howland was associated with Albert Kimsey Owen"s planned community Pacific City in Topolobampo, Mexico.
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, founded on Mobile Bay in Alabama in 1894.
She became the town"s librarian and wrote for its newspaper.