Octavia, Daughter of God: The Story of a Female Messiah and Her Followers

The little-known story of the charismatic, utopian leader Octavia and her devoted followers in the interwar years

In 1919, in the wake of the upheaval of World War I, a remarkable group of English women came up with their own solution to the world's grief: a new religion. At the heart of the Panacea Society was a charismatic and autocratic leader, a vicar's widow named Mabel Bartlrop. Her followers called her Octavia, and they believed that she was the daughter of God, sent to build the New...