Since the publication of Thomas More's genre-defining work Utopia in 1516, the field of utopian literature has evolved into an ever-expanding domain. This Companion presents an extensive historical survey of the development of utopianism, from the publication of Utopia to today's dark and despairing tendency towards dystopian pessimism, epitomised by works such as George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four and Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale. Chapters address the difficult definition of the concept of utopia, and consider its relation to science fiction and other literary genres. The volume takes an innovative approach to the major themes predominating within the utopian and dystopian literary tradition, including feminism, romance and ecology, and explores in detail the vexed question of the purportedly 'western' nature of the concept of utopia. The reader is provided with a balanced overview of the evolution and current state of a long-standing, rich tradition of historical, political and literary scholarship.

For the first time in this innovative reference book the Romantic Age is surveyed across all aspects of British culture, rather than in literary or artistic terms alone. The Companion's two-part structure presents forty-two essays on major topics, by leading international experts, cross-referenced to an extensive alphabetical section covering all the principal figures, events, and movements in the broad culture of the period. Aimed at students and general readers as well as scholars, the essays constitute an accessible, pluralistic, and modern social history of the epoch; the alphabetical entries can either be used alongside them, for deeper information on specific subjects, or as a free-standing reference tool. The volume as a whole embraces both high and low culture, and explores its subject across the whole breadth of England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland. The book's multi-disciplinary approach treats Romanticism both in aesthetic terms-its meaning for painting, music, design, architecture, and above all literature-and as a historical epoch of 'revolutionary' transformations which ushered in modern democratic and industrialized society. In this period Wedgwood turned taste into a commercial enterprise, Pierce Egan took Britain by storm with his sensational accounts of low-life in the capital, and Mary Shelley created, in Frankenstein, one of the enduring myths of scientific advance. The Companion revitalizes canonical Romantic figures in the context of the historical events, political and linguistic debates, commercial pressures, and plebeian subcultures of their day, as well as bringing back into historical focus individuals and events whose impact has often been muffled or forgotten. With over 100 integrated illustrations, bibliographies accompanying all the major essays, and an index to Part 1, this is the most comprehensive volume of its kind, offering a unique breadth of information to scholars and students of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British culture, literature, and history. EDITORIAL BOARD: John Brewer (University of California) Marilyn Butler (Exeter College, University of Oxford) James Chandler (University of Chicago) Jerome J. McGann ( University of Virginia, Charlottesville) Mark Philp (Oriel College, Oxford) Robert Webb (University of Maryland)

In Utopia, More paints a vision of the customs and practices of a distant island, but Utopia means 'no place' and his narrator's name, Hythlodaeus, translates as 'dispenser of nonsense'. This fantastical tale masks what is a serious and subversive analysis of the failings of More's society. Advocating instead a world in which there is religious tolerance, provision for the aged, and state ownership of land, Utopia has been variously claimed as a Catholic tract or an argument for communism andit still invites each generation to make its own interpretation.

Presents the first full-length study of the depiction and assessment of surveillance in literature and film.

This set of 44 volumes, originally published between 1924 and 1995, amalgamates a wide breadth of research on the Labour Movement, including labour union history, the early stages and development of the Labour Party, and studies on the working classes. This collection of books from some of the leading scholars in the field provides a comprehensive overview of the subject how it has evolved over time, and will be of particular interest to students of political history.

Monster studies, dystopian literature and film studies have become central to research on the now-proliferating works that give voice to culture-specific anxieties. This new development in scholarship reinforces the notion that the genres of fantasy and science fiction call for interpretations that see their spaces of imagination as reflections of reality, not as spaces invented merely to escape the real world. In this vein, Displacing the Anxieties of Our World discusses fictive spaces of literature, film, and video gaming. The eleven essays that follow the Introduction are grouped into four parts: I. “Imagined Journeys through History, Gaming and Travel”; II. “Political Anxieties and Fear of Dominance”; III. “The Space of Fantastic Science and Scholarship”; and IV. “Spaces Natural and Spaces Artificial”. The studies produce a dialogue among disciplinary fields that bridges the imagined space between sixteenth-century utopia and twenty-first century dystopia with analyses penetrating fictitious spaces beyond utopian and dystopian spheres. This volume argues, consequently, that the space of imagination that conjures up versions of the world's frustrations also offers a virtual battleground – and the possibility of triumph coming from a valuable gain of cognizance, once we perceive the correspondence between spaces of the fantastic and those of the mundane.

First published in 1992. The collapse of communist rule in Eastern Europe has led to a widespread view that socialism is a dead, or at least dying, force. Labour’s Utopias argues that this assumption is based on the popular conception that socialism’s various traditions are simply different means to a common end. The author looks at three strands of socialism – Bolshevism, Fabianism and German Social Democracy – in order to assess whether this argument is justified, concluding that in fact each has a distinct vision of an ideal future. This study will appeal to scholars and students of politics, history and socialism, and to all those with an interest in the alternatives to capitalism.