Signed
Meccania: The Super-State
Signed early rare dystopia, 1918
Meccania: The Super-State is one of the earliest dystopian portrayals of totalitarianism, anticipating both the rise of fascist politics and later anti-utopian classics like Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty-Four. Written as the travel diary of a Chinese visitor to a hyper-bureaucratic European state, it depicts a society where life is dictated by rigid class hierarchies, eugenic policies, and omnipresent surveillance. The novel offers a chilling vision of bureaucratic despotism decades ahead of its time. Originally published by Methuen & Co. in 1918, copies are rare, especially in the original dust jacket.
Signed copy. Inscribed as "from the author" on the half-title page.
Hardcover. First Edition. Octavo, red cloth stamped in black on front and spine. London: Methuen & Co., 1918. Locke, A Spectrum of Fantasy Vol. II, p.139. #10716.
Near fine copy in rare dust jacket. Jacket is a bit short for the book, likely either trimmed or more likely miscut by publisher as this has been observed in other copies. Jacket is amazingly well-preserved with almost no wear except to spine and one internal tape repair.
Signed copy. Inscribed as "from the author" on the half-title page.
Hardcover. First Edition. Octavo, red cloth stamped in black on front and spine. London: Methuen & Co., 1918. Locke, A Spectrum of Fantasy Vol. II, p.139. #10716.
Near fine copy in rare dust jacket. Jacket is a bit short for the book, likely either trimmed or more likely miscut by publisher as this has been observed in other copies. Jacket is amazingly well-preserved with almost no wear except to spine and one internal tape repair.
Additional Details
Meccania: The Super-State (1918) by Owen Gregory is among the earliest and most fully realized dystopian visions of totalitarianism, anticipating both the emergence of fascist politics and the great anti-utopian novels that would later define the genre. Framed as the travel diary of a Chinese visitor named Ming, the novel recounts his five-month journey through Meccania, a hyper-bureaucratic state that regulates every aspect of life in the name of efficiency and social order. Ming’s itinerary is tightly controlled by state officials who accompany him at every turn, dictating what he may see and how he should interpret it. Through his increasingly uneasy observations, the reader witnesses a society that has eliminated individuality in the pursuit of absolute organization.
In Meccania, citizens are divided into seven rigid classes, each identified by color-coded uniforms, and even the act of saluting a superior incorrectly can be punishable by death. The arts exist only to glorify the State, leisure has been abolished, and even personal time is managed by a bureaucracy “under the eye of the Time Department.” Marriage and procreation are directed through state eugenic policy, with women permitted to select fathers for their children based on genetic ideals rather than affection or partnership. Ming’s only genuine conversation with a Meccanian occurs during a visit to an asylum, where he meets a man imprisoned for expressing doubt in the regime. There he learns that dissent itself is classified as a form of mental illness—a chilling encapsulation of a nation that has pathologized freedom. Shortly after this encounter, Ming prepares to depart Meccania before it becomes too late to escape.
As a fellow traveler of Ming observes, in Meccania “the Super-State is the Divinity in which society lives and moves and has its being. It is omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent.” Published in the final months of the First World War, Meccania stands as a remarkable early forecast of the bureaucratic despotisms that would later emerge in Europe. Though ostensibly set in a fictional land in the year 1970, its allusions to contemporary Germany are unmistakable, positioning it as both speculative fiction and alternate history.
The identity of “Owen Gregory” has long been uncertain, but compelling evidence points to it being a pseudonym for E. S. P. Haynes (Edmund Sidney Pollock Haynes), a British lawyer and essayist known for his writings on liberty and state power. Bibliographer George Locke first advanced this conclusion based on circumstantial evidence, including a copy of Meccania inscribed by Haynes. Additional evidence further supports the connection: one copy of Meccania was found with a torn title page from Sophocles’ Plays signed “Lucy Haynes / Wimbledon,” with “ESP Haynes” written beneath, and another copy of Meccania is known inscribed simply “from the author,” a phrasing identical to that found in an inscribed copy of Haynes’s Fritto Misto (1924). Haynes’s The Decline of Liberty in England (1916) shares Meccania’s concerns with bureaucratic overreach, eugenics, and the erosion of personal freedom—making him a convincing candidate for the author behind this remarkably prescient novel.
In Meccania, citizens are divided into seven rigid classes, each identified by color-coded uniforms, and even the act of saluting a superior incorrectly can be punishable by death. The arts exist only to glorify the State, leisure has been abolished, and even personal time is managed by a bureaucracy “under the eye of the Time Department.” Marriage and procreation are directed through state eugenic policy, with women permitted to select fathers for their children based on genetic ideals rather than affection or partnership. Ming’s only genuine conversation with a Meccanian occurs during a visit to an asylum, where he meets a man imprisoned for expressing doubt in the regime. There he learns that dissent itself is classified as a form of mental illness—a chilling encapsulation of a nation that has pathologized freedom. Shortly after this encounter, Ming prepares to depart Meccania before it becomes too late to escape.
As a fellow traveler of Ming observes, in Meccania “the Super-State is the Divinity in which society lives and moves and has its being. It is omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent.” Published in the final months of the First World War, Meccania stands as a remarkable early forecast of the bureaucratic despotisms that would later emerge in Europe. Though ostensibly set in a fictional land in the year 1970, its allusions to contemporary Germany are unmistakable, positioning it as both speculative fiction and alternate history.
The identity of “Owen Gregory” has long been uncertain, but compelling evidence points to it being a pseudonym for E. S. P. Haynes (Edmund Sidney Pollock Haynes), a British lawyer and essayist known for his writings on liberty and state power. Bibliographer George Locke first advanced this conclusion based on circumstantial evidence, including a copy of Meccania inscribed by Haynes. Additional evidence further supports the connection: one copy of Meccania was found with a torn title page from Sophocles’ Plays signed “Lucy Haynes / Wimbledon,” with “ESP Haynes” written beneath, and another copy of Meccania is known inscribed simply “from the author,” a phrasing identical to that found in an inscribed copy of Haynes’s Fritto Misto (1924). Haynes’s The Decline of Liberty in England (1916) shares Meccania’s concerns with bureaucratic overreach, eugenics, and the erosion of personal freedom—making him a convincing candidate for the author behind this remarkably prescient novel.
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