Late Victorian Utopias:
A Prospectus
Editor: Gregory Claeys
978 1 85196 762 9: 234x156mm: £475.00/$835.00
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Utopian writing exists at a juncture of literature, politics and science, making this edition a unique resource for the study of nineteenth-century society. The texts in this set offer an original interpretation of nineteenth-century culture by contemporary writers, providing new insights for modern researchers from both a literary and historical standpoint.
This edition sets out to extend the utopian genre in order to allow a new understanding of both the genre and the late Victorian period.
In literary terms, our collection calls for a complete overhaul of existing assumptions about utopian writing in this era. William Morris’s News from Nowhere (1890), has until now been held up as the representative example of Victorian utopian writing. The variety of texts within these volumes reveals, however, that the Morris text is far from typical of the works of the era, as most utopias do not involve the revival of a medieval ethos, but instead rely on the future discovery or invention of scientific and social schemes of improvement.
- Texts fully reset
- Editorial apparatus includes a general introduction, headnotes and endnotes
- All items reproduced in full
Contents
Volume 1
[Ellis James Davis], Pyrna: A Commune; or, Under the Ice (1875)
In the Future: A Sketch in Ten Chapters (1875)
Etymonia (1875)
[Henry Crocker Marriott Watson], Erchomenon; or, The Republic of Materialism (1879)
Volume 2
Henry Wright, Mental Travels in Imagined Lands (1878)
A Thousand Years Hence (1882)
Volume 3
Joseph Carne-Ross, Quintura: Its Singular People and Remarkable Customs (1886)
[Henry Crocker Watson], The Decline and Fall of the British Empire; or, The Witch’s Cavern (1890)
Michael Rustoff (pseud.), What Will Mrs. Grundy Say? Or, A Calamity on Two Legs (1891)
[Charles Wicksteed Armstrong], The Yorl of the Northmen, or, The Fate of the English Race (1892)
Volume 4
William Herbert (pseud.?), The World Grown Young ([1892])
Frederick W Hayes, The Great Revolution of 1905; or, The Story of the Phalanx (1893)
Volume 5
G Read Murphy, Beyond the Ice: Being a Story of the Newly Discovered Region Round the North Pole ([1894])
Volume 6
Andrew Acworth, A New Eden (1896)
Z S Hendow (pseud.?), The Future Power: or, The Great Revolution of 190– (1897)
Henry Wright, Depopulation: A Romance of the Unlikely (1899)