Practical Utopia - The Many Lives of Dartington Hall

Dartington Hall was a social experiment of kaleidoscopic vitality, set up in Devon in 1925 by a fabulously wealthy American heiress, Dorothy Elmhirst (née Whitney), and her Yorkshire-born husband, Leonard. It quickly achieved international fame with its progressive school, craft production and wide-ranging artistic endeavours. Dartington was a residential community of students, teachers, farmers, artists and craftsmen committed to revivifying life in the countryside. It was also a socio-cultural laboratory, where many of the most brilliant interwar minds came to test out their ideas about art, society, spirituality and rural regeneration. To this day, Dartington Hall remains a symbol of countercultural experimentation and a centre for arts, ecology and social justice. Practical Utopia presents a compelling portrait of a group of people trying to live out their ideals, set within an international framework, and demonstrates Dartington's tangled affinities with other unity-seeking projects across Britain and in India and America.

List of contents

Introduction: An experiment in the art of living; 1. Overview; 2. Social and spiritual questing; 3. Education for change; 4. Creativity for all; 5. Regenerating rural life; Conclusion: The afterlife of a utopia.

About the author

Anna Neima completed her doctorate in history at the University of Cambridge and is now a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow. Her first book, The Utopians (2021), tells the story of six communities started around the globe after the First World War.

Product details

• Authors: Anna Neima, Neima Anna
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press ELT
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 30.04.2022
• EAN: 9781316517970
• ISBN: 978-1-316-51797-0
• No. of pages: 340
• Series: Modern British Histories
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > History > Regional and national histories; European History, Devon, Social & cultural history, 20th century history: c 1900 to c 2000, British & Irish history, Alternative lifestyles, HISTORY / Europe / Great Britain / General, Social and cultural history, c 1920 to c 1929, Social groups: alternative lifestyles, c 1918 to c 1939 (Inter-war period)