Extract: "I had long entertained the idea of building for myself a house in the woods, and there living alone. Not that I was cynical, or disgusted with the world. I have no reason to be disgusted with the world. It has given me lots of amusement, sandwiched between headaches, periods of repentance, and sundry hours spent in the manufacture of good resolutions..." The Swamp Angel is the first novel and one of the early works of Prentice Mulford. The novel is written in first person and tells the story of a man who is determined to build a house in the woods and lives there alone. As the building goes on, he asks some deep philosophical and psychological questions and tries to give the answers. He finally ends up in failure and realizes man should not be alone. Prentice Mulford (1834-1891) was a noted literary humorist, comic lecturer, author of poems and essays, and a columnist. He was also instrumental in the founding of the popular philosophy, New Thought, along with other notable writers including Ralph Waldo Emerson. Mulford's book, Thoughts are Things served as a guide to this new belief system and is still popular today. He also coined the term Law of Attraction.