The entertaining story of four utopian writers--Edward Bellamy,
William Morris, Edward Carpenter, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman--and
their continuing influence today
For readers reared on the dystopian visions of Nineteen Eighty-Four
and The Handmaid's Tale, the idea of a perfect society may sound more
sinister than enticing. In this lively literary history of a time before
"Orwellian" entered the cultural lexicon, Michael Robertson reintroduces
us to a vital strain of utopianism that seized the imaginations of late
nineteenth-century American and British writers.
The Last Utopians delves into the biographies of four key
figures--Edward Bellamy, William Morris, Edward Carpenter, and Charlotte
Perkins Gilman--who lived during an extraordinary period of literary and
social experimentation. The publication of Bellamy's Looking Backward
in 1888 opened the floodgates of an unprecedented wave of utopian
writing. Morris, the Arts and Crafts pioneer, was a committed socialist
whose News from Nowhere envisions a workers' Arcadia. Carpenter boldly
argued that homosexuals constitute a utopian vanguard. Gilman, a women's
rights activist and the author of "The Yellow Wallpaper," wrote numerous
utopian fictions, including Herland, a visionary tale of an all-female
society.
These writers, Robertson shows, shared a belief in radical equality,
imagining an end to class and gender hierarchies and envisioning new
forms of familial and romantic relationships. They held liberal
religious beliefs about a universal spirit uniting humanity. They
believed in social transformation through nonviolent means and were
committed to living a simple life rooted in a restored natural world.
And their legacy remains with us today, as Robertson describes in
entertaining firsthand accounts of contemporary utopianism, ranging from
Occupy Wall Street to a Radical Faerie retreat.
