News from Nowhere

First published in 1890, this utopian romance follows William Guest, who falls asleep in Hammersmith after a socialist meeting and wakes in a future England that has abolished money, prisons, and parliament. Dick Hammond and Clara show him a riverside London of gardens, craft workshops, and work done for pleasure rather than wages. At the British Museum, old Hammond recounts the revolution and civil war that produced this order. Guest then travels up the Thames toward a hay harvest, observing houses, dress, and how men and women live together. The book is a framed dream-journey: a political argument about labour and desire set in a remade countryside.

Bound in dark blue leather blocked in gold. All page edges gilt.