ABSTRACT
The Visionists were a group of artists, poets and writers who formed a secret society in late nineteenth-century Boston. The idea of the Visionists as an artistic brotherhood can be furthered by their interest in the occult and in spiritual matters. The Visionists formed from the 'madder and more fantastic members' of the Pewter Mugs, a drinking and literary society to which most of Boston's bohemian crowd belonged. Other Visionists included architect Ralph Adams Cram, publisher Herbert Copeland, designer Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue, poet Louise Imogen Guiney, designer and painter Thomas Meteyard, and poets Richard Hovey and the Canadian Bliss Carman. The Visionists were interested in no less than salvaging what they saw as the decay of their era through beauty (the journal did prove to be influential – it is remembered as 'the beginning of a new period of bookmaking in America').
