Book: Paperback | 129 x 198mm | 480 pages | ISBN 9780140433302 | 24 Jun 1993 | Penguin Classics
Poet, pattern-designer, environmentalist and maker of fine books, William Morris (1834-96) was also a committed socialist and visionary writer, obsessively concerned with the struggle to achieve a perfect society on earth. News From Nowhere, one of the most significant English works on the theme of utopia, is the tale of William Guest, a Victorian who wakes one morning to find himself in the year 2102 and discovers a society that has changed beyond recognition into a pastoral paradise, in which all people live in blissful equality and contentment. A socialist masterpiece, News From Nowhere is a vision of a future free from capitalism, isolation and industrialisation. This volume also contains a wide selection of Morris's writings, lectures, journalism and letters, which expand upon the key themes of News From Nowhere.
Introduction
Chronology
Bibliographical Note
Romance
The Story of the Unknown Church
A King's Lesson
Two Extracts from A Dream of John Ball News from Nowhere
Lectures
The Lesser Arts
Some Hints on Pattern-designing
Useful Work versus Useless Toil
The Hopes of Civilization
Gothic Architecture
Occasional Prose
"Looking Backward": a review of Looking Backward by Edward Bellamy
Under an Elm-tree; or, Thoughts in the Countryside
Preface to The Nature of Gothic by John Ruskin
Foreword to Utopia by Sir Thomas More
How I Became a Socialist
A Note by William Morris on His Aims in Founding the Kelmscott Press
Letters
[The Eastern Question]: letter to the Daily News
[Anti-Scrape]: letter to the Athenaeum
[St. Mark's, Venice]: letter to the Daily News
