THE CIRCULAR / THE ONEIDA CIRCULAR NEWSPAPERS (21 total issues: Seventeen unique dates with four duplicates).
Oneida, NY: John Humphrey Noyes, 1864 - 1875. Newspapers. Eight-page newsprint editions, each 13.75 in. x 10 in., which show few flaws beyond routine signs of age, handling and transit. A bit of edge-wear; a bit of chipping; some toning of the paper, but not much; some splits to edges, but not many. They are still attractive to look at and easy to read.
The lot of 21 copies (17 unique) is comprised of the following issues:
Mount Tom, Monday, April 25, 1864, Vol. I., No. 6. [Four inch closed tear to pages 1; split along the fold.]
Mount Tom, Monday, March 6, 1865. Vol. I., No. 51
Oneida Community, August 16, 1869,. Vol. VI, No. 22
Oneida Community, October 11, 1869. Vol. VI., No. 30
Oneida Community, February 28, 1870, Vol. VI, No. 50 (two copies)
Oneida Community, March 21, 1870, Vol. VII, No. 1 (two copies)
Oneida Community, April 25, 1870, Vol VII, No. 6
Oneida Community, September 5, 1870. Vol. VII, No. 25 (two copies)
Oneida Community, January 23, 1871. Vol. VIII, No. 4
Oneida Community, February 6, 1871. Vol. VIII, No. 6
Oneida Community, May 15, 1871. Volume VIII, No. 20 (two copies)
Oneida Community, July 17, 1871. Vol. VIII, No. 29
Oneida Community, September 18, 1871. Vol. VIII, No. 38
Oneida Community, April 15, 1872, Volume IX, No. 16
Oneida Community, August 31, 1874. Vol. XI, No. 36
Oneida Community, September 7, 1874. Volume XI, No. 31
Oneida Community, April 19, 1875. Vol. XII, No. 16
The item's masthead declaims: "Free to all. Those who wish to pay may sent two dollars a year." An early statement of the Law of Communism--from each, according to their abilities; to each, according to their needs--but from Christian, not Marxian standpoints.
The founder of the Oneida Community in upstate New York,, John Humphrey Noyes, was born on September 3, 1811 and lived until April 13, 1886. From his own personal socio-sexual entanglements and his theoretical proposition of the difference between propagative and amative love (one kind of sex is for love, the other kind of sex is for producing children) we get the term "complex marriage.”
Noyes graduated from Dartmouth College and then, eschewing a career in law, he pursued theological study at Andover Theological Seminary, and then Yale Theological Seminary.
Noyes wanted to preach the Christian gospel but also to graft a growing political consciousness and activism onto his Christian idealism, including anti-slavery efforts. His (and other) preachings supported the uplift of women and girls as against putting the brakes on men's and boys' sexual and other privileges. He preached against biological enslavement of women in too-frequent pregnancy by slacking the rope of thoughtless monogamy.
Some such intentional communities are marked by sexual liberalization in which "everyone was married to everyone else," but in an attempt to prevent a situation in which fecund females would be pregnant most of the time, Noyes developed an injunction against male ejaculation. At Oneida was preached and taught male continence, thus taking Onan's sin a step further, turning coitus interruptus into coitus reservatus so as not to deplete a man of his precious bodily fluids. The Oneida Community recorded a total of only 12 unplanned births from 1848-1868.
Noyes et al. proposed that sexual instruction toward "amative" love should occur between young men and post-menopausal women and older men and girls and young women (Chmielewski, DeMaria). Noyes et al. also embarked upon a program of stirpiculture, predating the growth of scientific eugenics by at least three decades. At Oneida and other communities were enrolled 53 women and 38 men who, having engaged in coitus completis, produced 58 children (nine of whose were biologically Noyes's). From its original founding in 1848 with John Humphrey Noyes and his wife and 85 other members, the Oneida Community broadened to just over 300 members by 1878 before dissolving in 1881 and being replaced by the fine chinaware company, Oneida Limited, which thrives to this day .
Satellite branches came into and went out of existence in Wallingford, Connecticut, in Newark, New Jersey, and in Putney and Cambridge, Vermont. Each of these are reported upon most fulsomely in this lot.
The Oneida Community was an experiment in "Christian perfectionism," but one also that attempted explicitly to raise women's status and give them better, if not fully proper, equal due. By perfect union with God, Noyes thought, humans could live lives entirely free from sin; he said in 1834 that he had reached sinless status (Nordhoff).
His own marriage in 1838 to Harriet Holton was productive of five live children; he was also attracted to the wife of an early convert, George Cragin; the two couples formed the first "complex marriage" in Oneida history (Nordhoff).
Individual issues of The Circular came into being only three years after the founding of the community in 1848. It began as the reinvented version of The Free Church Circular; that house organ ended with the destruction by fire of the printing area and apparatus in July 1851 (Wikipedia). Noyes served as writer, editor and publisher of all such periodicals as they came to be published in varied frequency. In 1864 a new series commenced. Issues were normally eight pages in length and each issue discoursed upon the comings and goings of commune members, political events in the United States, Christian theologies in debate and intimate commune functions. (Wikipedia)
Credit to Lawrence Hammer for much of the write-up! Very Good. Item #88134
Price: $200.00