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| Much has been said about Marie Howland, her advocacy of bathing in the nude, her belief in free love and so on. By the time she came to Fairhope, her experience with utopian communities and alternate lifestyles included time spent in the Lowell cotton mills; New York radical and literary salons; an industrial utopia in France; a rural New Jersey command post of reform agitation and happy living; and a colony in Mexico devoted to "integral cooperation". (see Woman of Fairhope by Paul M. Gaston) She brought with her a wealth of knowledge and experience about the world of that time, an attitude of happy optimism, and a collection of over a thousand books which became the nucleus of the Fairhope library, a library that preceded one in Mobile, Alabama. | 
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