The Spectre of Utopia

Contents: Utopian fiction - Science fiction - Disaster fiction - Radical publishing - Feminism - Socialism - Occultism.

Matthew Beaumont is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of English at University College London.

«Matthew Beaumont is one of the most brilliant of the younger generation of English critics. His work on late Victorian culture puts him among the most suggestive and original scholars of the period. While focused on Bellamy, this wide-ranging study encompasses a rich variety of authors and intellectual currents, all dealing with the elusive but utterly essential idea of utopia. In its theoretical sophistication and historical depth, Beaumont's work is both innovative and illuminating.» (Terry Eagleton, Distinguished Professor of English at Lancaster University and author of 'Trouble with Strangers' and 'Why Marx Was Right')
«So much has been written about 'Looking Backward' and late nineteenth-century utopian literature that one wonders if these topics can ever come to us fresh again. Beaumont answers this question by placing Bellamy's utopia within significant yet rarely studied publication and reception contexts, such as the London Bellamy Library books series designed to educate working-class readers, and by presenting utopia as a constructively troubling spectre, a ghost evaluating the readers' present by haunting them with a sense of the absence of a suppressed better world existing somewhere between possibility and impossibility. Thus Beaumont does refresh utopia for us.» (Kenneth Roemer, Piper Professor, University of Texas at Arlington and author of 'The Obsolete Necessity: America in Utopian Writings, 1888-1900' and 'Utopian Audiences')
«This is a rich and provocative book in which Beaumont challenges conventional readings of utopian writing at the turn of the twentieth century. Written with insight and clarity, it provides fresh perspectives and unsettles old certainties. It is essential reading for anyone concerned with the cultural context of the time.» (Ruth Levitas, Professor of Sociology, University of Bristol and author of 'The Concept of Utopia')
«For me the book's two outstanding features are its erudition and cohesion. Beaumont's