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

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 Jerusalem in Bedford.

When the last living members of the Panacea Society revealed to historian Jane Shaw their i...