![]() ![]() The two works have several obvious similarities. ![]() There can be no doubt that Morris was much influenced by Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward, another utopian novel, which preceded News from Nowhere by two years. The book can be seen as Morris’s contribution, even intervention, in the dispute between the different socialist factions of his own day. An ethos of concern for others and society at large, rather than self-interest, is only possible in a socialist commonwealth. ![]() ![]() As in Utopia, goods have to be in public ownership in order to achieve an egalitarian society. It reflects Morris’s vision of the society of the future occurring ‘when the words poor and rich… will have lost their own meaning’. It outlines an ideal socialist society, albeit in the distant future, in which few demands are made of its population. William Morris’s News from Nowhere is firmly planted in this Utopian tradition. Several examples of literature describing alternative ideal societies followed, notably Voltaire’s Candide and Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis. In some respects, the work was a criticism, albeit an implied one, of aspects of the society of his day. The word itself (derived from the Greek words ‘ou’ and ‘topos’, meaning ‘no place’ or ‘nowhere’) was coined by Thomas More in his 1516 work as the name of a fictional island which possessed the characteristics of an ideal society. In its strictest sense, ‘Utopia’ signifies an ideal society. The Utopian Tradition – William Morris and Edward Bellamy By Anthony Anderson ![]()
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