Brisbane, Albert

Related Category: Sociology: Biographies

(brĭz´bān), 1809–90, American social theorist, b. Batavia, N.Y. After studying with Charles Fourier in Paris, he returned to the United States as an enthusiastic advocate of Fourierism. His Social Destiny of Man (1840) aroused widespread interest, especially that of Horace Greeley, who gave him a column in the Tribune. Brisbane was instrumental in the founding of the phalanxes at Brook Farm and Red Bank, N.J. The failure of most of the other communal experiments was disastrous for the Fourierist cause, but Brisbane reaffirmed his convictions in his General Introduction to Social Science (1876). His wife, Redelia Brisbane, edited and wrote an introduction to his autobiography, published posthumously as Albert Brisbane: A Mental Biography (1893, repr. 1969). His son, Arthur Brisbane (1864–1936), was editor of the New York Evening Journal and other Hearst papers.

See biography by O. Carlson (1937).