Margaret J. Honn — Conscience

Margaret J. Honn’s Conscience (1925) is a singular Los Angeles hybrid: epic poem, dramatic dialogue, occult journey, Hollywood satire, moral tract, and photographic portrait of the city’s Peter the Hermit. Led through a visionary City of the Borderland, a spiritually exhausted former actor watches earthly appetites return as afterlife punishments before meeting “Conscience,” the prophetic Peter of the Hills. Honn was a Wisconsin-born poet and singer whose 1930 census occupation was recorded simply as “Author / Poetry.” Her sole located book gives vivid evidence of the comparative-religious and motion-picture cultures that mingled in 1920s Hollywood. This edition resets the full work from the scan, restores its Preface to coherent order, retains its italics and speaker structure, and reproduces each distinct archival photograph once.