The Island of Anarchy - A Fragment of History in the 20th Century
First edition, 1887
The Island of Anarchy: A Fragment of History in the 20th Century (1887) is a short speculative fable by Elizabeth Waterhouse (1834-1918), a Quaker writer whose published work otherwise consists largely of religious studies and tracts. Set in a near-future England that has resolved its social crisis by banishing all anarchists, socialists, and nihilists to Meliora, a remote Pacific island newly risen from the sea, the novel imagines what happens when those who reject all law are finally left to govern themselves. The result is a compressed political history of the colony: an initial period of order under a venerable English scholar and a group of Christian priests gives way to violence when more radical continental arrivals massacre the moderates. The island descends into chaos before a brief spiritual awakening produces a fragile Christian anarchist community, destroyed when the island sinks back into the sea. The sole survivor, a Russian prince turned Christian anarchist, dictates the island's history before dying at sea.
The England that exiles these dissidents is itself a kind of dystopia by any modern reading: women have been returned to domestic life as a feature of the new order, and dissidents are branded on the forehead before banishment. Waterhouse presents both measures approvingly, reflecting a conservative Christian worldview that sits uneasily alongside the book's genuine engagement with anarchist and socialist ideas. Darko Suvin's description in Victorian Science Fiction in the UK is blunt and accurate: "Very right-wing but interesting." Published by Miss Langley Lovejoy's Library in Reading and printed by the Chiswick Press, the book is uncommon.
Hardcover. First Edition, First Issue. Small duodecimo, white cloth, front panel stamped in red and black, spine panel stamped in black, edges untrimmed. [England]: Miss Langley Lovejoy's Library, 1887. #11469.
Cloth dusty and chipped at spine ends with darkened spine. Overall, a good copy.
The England that exiles these dissidents is itself a kind of dystopia by any modern reading: women have been returned to domestic life as a feature of the new order, and dissidents are branded on the forehead before banishment. Waterhouse presents both measures approvingly, reflecting a conservative Christian worldview that sits uneasily alongside the book's genuine engagement with anarchist and socialist ideas. Darko Suvin's description in Victorian Science Fiction in the UK is blunt and accurate: "Very right-wing but interesting." Published by Miss Langley Lovejoy's Library in Reading and printed by the Chiswick Press, the book is uncommon.
Hardcover. First Edition, First Issue. Small duodecimo, white cloth, front panel stamped in red and black, spine panel stamped in black, edges untrimmed. [England]: Miss Langley Lovejoy's Library, 1887. #11469.
Cloth dusty and chipped at spine ends with darkened spine. Overall, a good copy.