George Ripley (transcendentalist)
George Ripley was an American social reformer, Unitarian minister, and journalist associated with Transcendentalism. He was the founder of the short-lived Utopian community Brook Farm in West Roxbury, Massachusetts.
Ripley, sometime between 1849 and 1860; detail from Mathew Brady's daguerreotype of the New York Tribune editorial staff
Former site of Brook Farm in West Roxbury, Massachusetts
George Ripley as he appeared in his later years
Reformism is a type of social movement that aims to bring a social or also a political system closer to the community's ideal. A reform movement is distinguished from more radical social movements such as revolutionary movements which reject those old ideals, in that the ideas are often grounded in liberalism, although they may be rooted in socialist or religious concepts. Some rely on personal transformation; others rely on small collectives, such as Mahatma Gandhi's spinning wheel and the self-sustaining village economy, as a mode of social change. Reactionary movements, which can arise against any of these, attempt to put things back the way they were before any successes the new reform movement(s) enjoyed, or to prevent any such successes.
Chartist meeting, Kennington Common, 1848
Mary Wollstonecraft
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, 1792
Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey Monument in Newcastle upon Tyne