Maps of Utopia: H. G. Wells, Modernity and the End of Culture PDF
Preview Maps of Utopia: H. G. Wells, Modernity and the End of Culture
MAPS OF UTOPIA This page intentionally left blank Maps of Utopia H. G. Wells, Modernity, and the End of Culture SIMON J. JAMES ‘AmapoftheworldthatdoesnotincludeUtopia isnotworthevenglancingat.’ OscarWilde,‘TheSoulofManunderSocialism’ 1 3 GreatClarendonStreet,OxfordOX26DP OxfordUniversityPressisadepartmentoftheUniversityofOxford. ItfurtherstheUniversity’sobjectiveofexcellenceinresearch,scholarship, andeducationbypublishingworldwidein Oxford NewYork Auckland CapeTown DaresSalaam HongKong Karachi KualaLumpur Madrid Melbourne MexicoCity Nairobi NewDelhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto Withofficesin Argentina Austria Brazil Chile CzechRepublic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore SouthKorea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam OxfordisaregisteredtrademarkofOxfordUniversityPress intheUKandincertainothercountries PublishedintheUnitedStates byOxfordUniversityPressInc.,NewYork #SimonJ.James2012 Themoralrightsoftheauthorhavebeenasserted DatabaserightOxfordUniversityPress(maker) Firstpublished2012 Allrightsreserved.Nopartofthispublicationmaybereproduced, storedinaretrievalsystem,ortransmitted,inanyformorbyanymeans, withoutthepriorpermissioninwritingofOxfordUniversityPress, orasexpresslypermittedbylaw,orundertermsagreedwiththeappropriate reprographicsrightsorganization.Enquiriesconcerningreproduction outsidethescopeoftheaboveshouldbesenttotheRightsDepartment, OxfordUniversityPress,attheaddressabove Youmustnotcirculatethisbookinanyotherbindingorcover andyoumustimposethesameconditiononanyacquirer BritishLibraryCataloguinginPublicationData Dataavailable LibraryofCongressCataloginginPublicationData LibraryofCongressControlNumber:2011939892 TypesetbySPIPublisherServices,Pondicherry,India PrintedinGreatBritain onacid-freepaperby MPGBooksGroup,BodminandKing’sLynn ISBN 978–0–19–960659–7 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2 For Kate, of course. And Trevor and Lenny Bob This page intentionally left blank Contents Preface ix Acknowledgements xiii 1. OfArt,OfLiterature,OfMr.H.G.Wells 1 2. TheHistoryoftheFuture:TheScientificRomances 37 3. TheUsesofLiteracy:ReadingandRealisminWells’sNovels 77 4. TheIdeaofaPlannedWorld:H.G.Wells’sUtopias 125 5. EducationandCatastrophe:TheWarandtheWorld 157 Bibliography 197 Index 221 This page intentionally left blank Preface Writingonanauthorwithwhosepersonalviewsonefrequentlydisagrees withcanproducedifficulties.AnauthorasopinionatedasH.G.Wellswill provokesomedisagreementinalmostallofhisreaders.Asaconsequence, differentcriticalworkonWellshasseverallydismissedthemajorityofhis published output, been nakedly hostile to the content of the text it discusses, sought to find a means of legitimizing his work’s agenda in the present day, or even reshaped the text to promote the critic’s own agenda. I have attempted in what follows to avoid where possible unnecessary hindsight condemnation of Wells’s failings, but also to suggest a small revisioninthereceivedversionoftheliteraryhistoryofthefin-de-siècleand earlytwentieth-centuryperiods.Theperioddubbedthe‘Interregnum’by RaymondWilliams(acriticwhowasnonethelessamongthefirsttotreat suchwritersasGissing,Wells,andBennettwiththehistoricalseriousness thattheydeserve)hasonlyrecentlybeguntoreceivethecriticalattention it deserves, in comparison to the high Victorian era and canonical mod- ernism.1EvenasstaunchaWellsianasJohnHammondmakesacasefor thevalueofWells’sworkonthegroundsofhis‘modernism’,asifthis,as for Conrad and James, is the means by which he might escape the backwater of ‘transition’ and be counted in the first rank of canonical writers.2SincehighmodernismandthebirthofEnglishStudiesasamajor academic discipline share an origin at roughly the same time, they share many of the same values and methodologies—Wells is thus proved ‘wrong’ by the canons that evolved for literary study over the twentieth century. As David Trotter has also argued, modernism is still too often used toevaluateratherthan tocharacterize, todistinguishbetweenthose writers who are considered innovatory, and thus worthy of study, and those who aren’t.3 Maps of Utopia seeks to recover some of Wells’s reputationinhisownlifetime,asperhapsthemostinfluentialAnglophone 1 Raymond Williams, Culture and Society, 1780–1950 (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1963),165. 2 J. R Hammond, H. G. Wells and the Modern Novel (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1988).Forathoughtfuldiscussionofthisissue,seeRobertL.Caserio,‘TheNovelasNovel Experiment in Statement: The Anticanonical Example of H. G. Wells’, in Decolonizing Tradition:NewViewsofTwentieth-Century‘British’LiteraryCanons(Urbana:Universityof IllinoisPress,1992),88–109. 3 DavidTrotter,TheEnglishNovelinHistory,1895–1920(London:Routledge,1993),5.
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