author
Zebina Forbush
A rare voice in early American utopian fiction, this author imagined an Idaho transformed by cooperation, shared prosperity, and social equality. The result is an intriguing glimpse into the reform-minded hopes of the 1890s.
1 Audiobook
The Co-opolitan : a story of the Co-operative Commonwealth of Idaho
by Zebina Forbush
About the author
Zebina Forbush was the pen name associated with Frances H. Clarke, a little-documented American author. The Science Fiction Encyclopedia identifies Clarke as the author of The Co-opolitan: A Story of the Co-operative Commonwealth of Idaho, published in 1898 by Charles H. Kerr & Company.
Set against the economic tensions of the late nineteenth century, The Co-opolitan envisions a cooperative society established in Idaho. Its imagined community promotes shared resources, economic reform, and greater equality between women and men, placing the book among the era’s early utopian and proto-science-fiction novels.
Few reliable biographical details about Clarke have been preserved, but the novel remains a distinctive example of American social speculation from the 1890s.