News From Nowhere

Author: William Morris

At the start of The Time Machine by H.G. Wells, a bunch of characters assemble, most of them identified only by their job: the local mayor, the journalist, and so on. One unnamed figure is actually William Morris, artist, poet, furniture maker, printer, wallpaper designer, and author of News from Nowhere. This is the reason he's on Wells's guest list, because the world the time traveller visits is in part a response to the idealised socialist utopia that Morris had presented in this book. A socialist falls asleep in the 19th century and wakes in a future where all socialist ideals have come true. He finds this future London to be a paradise where there is no class system, no private property, no prisons, and where people work only because it is pleasureable to do so. Our Victorian traveller is conducted around this wonderland by a man who represents everything that Morris believes in, and falls in love with a woman who has been liberated by socialism. Why it's on the list: News from Nowhere was propaganda, of course, but Morris was also a very fine writer of romance and fantasy, and he brought this skill to bear on his novel. This was one of the last great utopias in the traditional style before H.G. Wells reinvented the form with his own A Modern Utopia.