My talk outlines my current project on socialist ideas in the nineteenth century U.S., based on the theories of Charles Fourier's critique of the family and creative design of an alternative,  their influence on the in the social movements and literary experiment of the 1850s. I touch on the poetic systems Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman fashion in the fascicles (manuscript books) and repeated revised editions of Leaves of Grass, systems that enliven their sex-radical world-making efforts.  Using the example of Harriet Jacobs, I also consider how Abolitionist authors adapted a socialist critique of the family to abolitionist purposes.