Anti-Feminist Utopian Novel
The Isle of Feminine
Publication: Little Rock, AR: Press of Brown Printing Company, 1893. First Edition.
Notes: An uncommon Lost Race novel published in Arkansas.
"This 1893 dystopian novel by Charles Elliot Niswonger (1868–1918) is a parody of feminism that takes place on a Caribbean island ruled by asexual women. The narrator of the story is a New York stockbroker... who is shipwrecked and finds himself on the remote Isle of the Feminine. First concluding that he has arrived at a matriarchal island paradise, he soon finds out that here the men are dwarfed slaves, symbolically castrated and terrorized by a council of asexual virgins. The power of the women on the island hinges on their rejection of sexual intercourse, but the community is weakened when the virgins become attracted to the outsider."—Historical Dictionary of Utopianism (2017).
The author was a commercial agent for a railroad, a manager for a grain company, and a sometime mentalist.
viii, 9–160 pages.
Edition + Condition: First edition (first printing). A very good copy in blue cloth with minor discoloration and a number (probably a private library ID) on the spine. This copy is inscribed, "To Miss Janie Woodruff, with compliments, Charles Elliot Niswonger. Little Rock 30th May 1894."
Item No: #366316
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