Morris: News from Nowhere

A new edition of William Morris's classic text of British socialism.

William Morris (Author), Krishan Kumar (Edited by)

9780521422338, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 9 March 1995

264 pages
21.6 x 13.6 x 2 cm, 0.364 kg

News from Nowhere (1890) is the most famous work of one of the greatest British writers and thinkers, William Morris. It is a utopian picture of a future communist society, drawing on the work of Ruskin and Marx and written in response to what Morris saw as soulless and mechanical visions of socialism. In this work of his last years, Morris distilled many of his leading ideas on politics, art and society, imagining a world in which capitalism has been abolished by a workers' revolution and nature and society have become beautiful habitations for humanity. In an era that has seen the collapse of state socialism, Morris's damning critique of this conception, and his positing of a powerful alternative, have important contemporary resonances.

1. Discussion and bed
2. A morning bath
3. The guest house and breakfast therein
4. A market by the way
5. Children on the road
6. A little shopping
7. Trafalgar Square
8. An old friend
9. Concerning love
10. Questions and answers
11. Concerning government
12. Concerning the arrangement of life
13. Concerning politics
14. How matters are managed
15. On the lack of incentive to labour in a communist society
16. Dinner in the hall of the Bloomsbury market
17. How the change came
18. The beginning of the new life
19. The drive back to Hammersmith
20. The Hammersmith guest house again
21. Going up the river
22. Hampton Court, and a praiser of past times
23. An early morning by Runnymede
24. Up the Thames
25. The third day on the Thames
26. The Obstinate Refusers
27. The upper waters
28. The little river
29. A resting-place on the upper Thames
30. The journey's end
31. An old house amongst new folk
32. The feast's beginning - the end.

Subject Areas: History of ideas [JFCX]