Jonathan F. Beecher's accomplished study is both a lively life story of one of the most engaging figures among the French romantic intellectuals of the 1840s and a compelling chronicle of early French socialism. Victor Considerant (1808-1893), a follower of the great utopian thinker Charles Fourier, played an important role in the creation of a Fourierist movement and the development of socialist journalism. In the process of conveying a rich understanding of Considerant's life, Beecher traces the rise and fall of French romantic socialism and demonstrates how the utopian visions of thinkers...