News from Nowhere
- by William Morris
- Novel
- Adults
- Undetermined Time Travel
- English
- News from Nowhere: or, An Epoch of Rest. Being Some Chapters from a Utopian Romance. by William Morris, 39-part serial, The Commonweal, 11 January 1890 to 4 October 1890.
Via a dream, the “Guest”—most likely Morris himself—travels a century or more into the future where he finds an almost communistic society working smoothly.
—based on Frank J. Bleiler
The date shut my mouth as if a key had been turned in a padlock fixed to my lips; for I saw that something inexplicable had happened, and that if I said much I should be mixed up in a game of cross questions and crooked answers.
Tags
(7)
- Time Periods
- Circa AD 1800 to 1899: William Guest’s presumed time: circa 1890
- Circa AD 2000 to 2099: In the serialization, the time visited is not long after 1971 when the bride in Chapter 2 was opened—although Bleiler suggests that it’s late 21st or early 22nd century. And the Reeves and Turner edition at archive.org has changed the date to 2003. So, were going with late 21st.
- Timeline Models
- Time Travel Methods
- Themes
- Money Difficulties: The guest tries to use old coins.
- Groupings
Variants
(3)
- News from Nowhere: or, An Epoch of Rest. Being Some Chapters from a Utopian Romance. by William Morris, 39-part serial, The Commonweal, 11 January 1890 to 4 October 1890.
- alternative title.
News from Nowhere; or, An Epoch of Rest. Being Some Chapters from a Utopian Romance. by William Morris (Roberts Brothers, 1890). - alternative title.
News from Nowhere or, an Epoch of Rest, Being Some Chapters from a Utopian Romance. by William Morris (Reeves and Turner, 1891).
Indexer Notes
(2)
- Handle—We’re following Wikipedia, hence we omit the subtitles from this work’s canonical handle.
- Titles—In a more modern title, the odd punctuation of several titles would probably be altered to fit Chicago style. But Chicago, 17th edition, 14.97 indicates that titles of works published in the eighteenth century or earlier may retain their original punctuation—and weve decided to extend this rule to the nineteenth century because it seems those oddities are as much a part of the 1800s and they were beforehand.
The first American book edition (1890) changed the internal colon to a semicolon (see the 1890 Abe Books listing). We entered its date code as late 1890, assuming that it appeared after the serialization.
But the first UK book edition changed the internal period to a comma (see the 1891 Abe Books listing).
We’ve yet to index any later variants.