Acknowledgements
Introduction
Chapter 1. English Utopia and Utopian England
Chapter 2. The Wellsian Utopia and the Discourse of England
Chapter 3. England in Transition: Memory, Politics, and Technology
Chapter 4. England Redeemed: The Road, the Rose, and the Dream
Chapter 5. The End of England: Eugenics, Landscape, and Recollection
Coda: England for England’s Sake?
Bibliography
Index
Maxim Shadurski holds a PhD in English Literature from the University of Edinburgh. He is the author of Literary Utopias from More to Huxley: The Issues of Genre Poetics and Semiosphere. Finding an Island (2007) and Utopia as a World Model: The Boundaries and Borderlands of a Literary Phenomenon (2016), as well as essays on utopia, nationalism, and landscape. He edits The Wellsian: The Journal of the H. G. Wells Society and serves as an academic advisor for the Gale/Cengage publishing group. He is an Associate Professor of English Literature at Siedlce University (Poland).
"H. G. Wells was a profoundly English writer who championed an
ideal of world citizenship. Maxim Shadurski's examination of this
paradox is both searching and timely. It should be read by anyone
interested in Wells and in the reflections of nationality in modern
utopian writing."--Patrick Parrinder, President, H. G. Wells
Society"This is an excellent study of England as a contemporary
place and England as a futuristic state of mind converging in the
works of H. G. Wells, undoubtedly one of the "Englishest" of all
English writers. Maxim Shadurski revisits Wells’s "visions of
alterity" with a fresh and insightful perspective and then aptly
examines how these visions served as fodder for the dystopian
writers of the following generations, including Aldous Huxley and
George Orwell. Highly recommended!"--Galya Diment, Byron W. and
Alice L. Lockwood Professor in the Humanities, University of
Washington.Thorough and insightful, The Nationality of Utopia
explores productively the strange extent to which ideas of Utopia
came to be conflated with ideas of England, offering innovative,
persuasive views, throughout, of the authors and contexts
concerned. --Professor Randall Stevenson, The University of
EdinburghA landmark in Wells scholarship. No one has ever traced so
effectively the importance of Englishness in Britishness in the
work of a writer so engaged in questions of nationality and the
global; especially impressive is the attention that The Nationality
of Utopia gives to some of Wells's later, less considered
works.--Professor Simon J. James, The University of DurhamThis
splendid book locates H.G.Wells in the context of other
contemporary and later utopian and dystopian fiction in England,
stressing Wells' positive postnational vision, in contrast to the
negative portrayals in the writings of a number of his
contemporaries. The arguments are highly original and nuanced and
the study makes a major contribution to utopian studies and to an
understanding of twentieth-century literature and politics more
broadly.--Laura Marcus, Goldsmiths' Professor of English
Literature, New College, The University of OxfordShadurski’s study
addresses Wellsian utopianism from two, we might think, opposite
angles: nationalism, on the one hand, and Wells’s lifelong
proselytising for a World State, on the other. It proves an
illuminating pincer movement and facilitates a series of original
and penetrating readings of several key Wellsian works. [...] there
is no doubt that this book is a major intervention into both the
study of Wells as a writer and thinker, and into utopian theory
more broadly. Anyone interested in either field will want to seek
it out, and future critical debate on both topics will need to take
it into account.--Adam Roberts, Professor of Nineteenth-Century
Literature, Royal Holloway University of London, The WellsianThe
Nationality of Utopia is a compelling study, which – with its
emphasis on the literary portrayal of Wells’s World State – might
be read alongside W. Warren Wagar’s classic H. G. Wells and the
World State (1961) by anyone seeking a comprehensive understanding
of Wells’s conception. [...] Shadurski’s study is hugely relevant
to present-day concerns, particularly (as he notes himself) Brexit,
which (it might be said) was driven by an isolationist discourse
that sees England as a special, even providential, nation.--Dr
Steven McLean, Associate Professor of English Literature, Hankuk
University of Foreign Studies, English Studies: A Journal of
English Language and LiteratureBy suggesting intersections between
Wells’s thought and that of Benson, Huxley, Orwell, Burgess and
Barnes, Shadurski provides hooks upon which future research can be
hung. If considered as an introduction to its subject, Shadurski’s
volume has a role to play for students of utopian thought, and its
availability as an affordable e-book means there is no reason why
such students should not quite readily access it.--Dr John S.
Partington, independent scholar, Utopian StudiesMaxim Shadurski’s
study demonstrates that reading utopia through the lens of its
inflection by nationalism provides an inspiring impulse to rethink
both discourses as complementary rather than mutually exclusive.
[...] The Nationality of Utopia is a treat, discussing as it does
in detail H. G. Wells’s numerous works and theories in a broad
context both of his own times and those of the following
decades.--Professor Barbara Kłonowska, The John Paul II Catholic
University of Lublin, New Horizons in English StudiesShadurski’s
analysis is an eminently readable journey into 20th-century
literary visions of the future and therefore a worthy contribution
to the rich field of Wellsian scholarship.--Professor Oliver von
Knebel Doeberitz, The University of Leipzig, Anglistik:
International Journal of English StudiesMaxim Shadurski’s The
Nationality of Utopia: H. G. Wells, England, and the World State is
an exceptionally interesting study that could be useful not only to
researchers of utopia in English literature but to all those
investigating the issues of nation and nationality in the context
of utopian and/or globalist discourse. Nowadays, when there is so
much talk about the need for a global ‘reset’, for a kind of global
solution to the accumulated problems the world is facing, we should
bear in mind that Wells also wrote about these matters, yet from a
different perspective. We seem to be getting ever closer to
dystopia and further away from utopia, and in moments like these it
is crucial that we critically reappraise the original utopian
ideas, just like Shadurski masterfully does.--Professor Zorica
Đergović-Joksimović, The University of Novi Sad, Književna
istorija
"H. G. Wells was a profoundly English writer who championed an
ideal of world citizenship. Maxim Shadurski's examination of this
paradox is both searching and timely. It should be read by anyone
interested in Wells and in the reflections of nationality in modern
utopian writing."--Patrick Parrinder, President, H. G. Wells
Society"This is an excellent study of England as a contemporary
place and England as a futuristic state of mind converging in the
works of H. G. Wells, undoubtedly one of the "Englishest" of all
English writers. Maxim Shadurski revisits Wells’s "visions of
alterity" with a fresh and insightful perspective and then aptly
examines how these visions served as fodder for the dystopian
writers of the following generations, including Aldous Huxley and
George Orwell. Highly recommended!"--Galya Diment, Byron W. and
Alice L. Lockwood Professor in the Humanities, University of
Washington.Thorough and insightful, The Nationality of Utopia
explores productively the strange extent to which ideas of Utopia
came to be conflated with ideas of England, offering innovative,
persuasive views, throughout, of the authors and contexts
concerned. --Professor Randall Stevenson, The University of
EdinburghA landmark in Wells scholarship. No one has ever traced so
effectively the importance of Englishness in Britishness in the
work of a writer so engaged in questions of nationality and the
global; especially impressive is the attention that The Nationality
of Utopia gives to some of Wells's later, less considered
works.--Professor Simon J. James, The University of DurhamThis
splendid book locates H.G.Wells in the context of other
contemporary and later utopian and dystopian fiction in England,
stressing Wells' positive postnational vision, in contrast to the
negative portrayals in the writings of a number of his
contemporaries. The arguments are highly original and nuanced and
the study makes a major contribution to utopian studies and to an
understanding of twentieth-century literature and politics more
broadly.--Laura Marcus, Goldsmiths' Professor of English
Literature, New College, The University of OxfordShadurski’s study
addresses Wellsian utopianism from two, we might think, opposite
angles: nationalism, on the one hand, and Wells’s lifelong
proselytising for a World State, on the other. It proves an
illuminating pincer movement and facilitates a series of original
and penetrating readings of several key Wellsian works. [...] there
is no doubt that this book is a major intervention into both the
study of Wells as a writer and thinker, and into utopian theory
more broadly. Anyone interested in either field will want to seek
it out, and future critical debate on both topics will need to take
it into account.--Adam Roberts, Professor of Nineteenth-Century
Literature, Royal Holloway University of London, The WellsianThe
Nationality of Utopia is a compelling study, which – with its
emphasis on the literary portrayal of Wells’s World State – might
be read alongside W. Warren Wagar’s classic H. G. Wells and the
World State (1961) by anyone seeking a comprehensive understanding
of Wells’s conception. [...] Shadurski’s study is hugely relevant
to present-day concerns, particularly (as he notes himself) Brexit,
which (it might be said) was driven by an isolationist discourse
that sees England as a special, even providential, nation.--Dr
Steven McLean, Associate Professor of English Literature, Hankuk
University of Foreign Studies, English Studies: A Journal of
English Language and LiteratureBy suggesting intersections between
Wells’s thought and that of Benson, Huxley, Orwell, Burgess and
Barnes, Shadurski provides hooks upon which future research can be
hung. If considered as an introduction to its subject, Shadurski’s
volume has a role to play for students of utopian thought, and its
availability as an affordable e-book means there is no reason why
such students should not quite readily access it.--Dr John S.
Partington, independent scholar, Utopian StudiesMaxim Shadurski’s
study demonstrates that reading utopia through the lens of its
inflection by nationalism provides an inspiring impulse to rethink
both discourses as complementary rather than mutually exclusive.
[...] The Nationality of Utopia is a treat, discussing as it does
in detail H. G. Wells’s numerous works and theories in a broad
context both of his own times and those of the following
decades.--Professor Barbara Kłonowska, The John Paul II Catholic
University of Lublin, New Horizons in English StudiesShadurski’s
analysis is an eminently readable journey into 20th-century
literary visions of the future and therefore a worthy contribution
to the rich field of Wellsian scholarship.--Professor Oliver von
Knebel Doeberitz, The University of Leipzig, Anglistik:
International Journal of English StudiesMaxim Shadurski’s The
Nationality of Utopia: H. G. Wells, England, and the World State is
an exceptionally interesting study that could be useful not only to
researchers of utopia in English literature but to all those
investigating the issues of nation and nationality in the context
of utopian and/or globalist discourse. Nowadays, when there is so
much talk about the need for a global ‘reset’, for a kind of global
solution to the accumulated problems the world is facing, we should
bear in mind that Wells also wrote about these matters, yet from a
different perspective. We seem to be getting ever closer to
dystopia and further away from utopia, and in moments like these it
is crucial that we critically reappraise the original utopian
ideas, just like Shadurski masterfully does.--Professor Zorica
Đergović-Joksimović, The University of Novi Sad, Književna istorija
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