Publisher's Synopsis
In this volume 2: Two novels in which time travel is central to the plot or the premise of the work.About the Series "TIME TRAVEL IN LITERATURE". Volume 1. W. IRVING / C. DICKENS (Illustrated).- Rip Van Winkle Illustrated by Arthur Rackham (1819) by Washington Irving. A man falls asleep on a mountain side and wakes twenty years in the future. He finds he has been forgotten, his wife has died and his daughter is no longer a child.- A Christmas Carol Illustrated by John Leech (1843) by Charles Dickens The heartless Ebenezer Scrooge, an old miser, is visited by the ghost of his former business partner Jacob Marley and the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Yet to Come, in order to teach him the consequences of his selfish ways.Volume 2. .E. BELLAMY / W. MORRIS. (Annotated).- LOOKING BACKWARD: 2000-1887 (1888 ) BY Edward Bellamy.In the late 19th century, Julian West falls into a deep, hypnosis-induced sleep and wakes 113 years later. - A DREAM OF JOHN BALL (1888) BY William Morris. John Ball travels between mediaeval and contemporary worlds.- Annotations: Biographical note by John W. Cousin. William Morris by George Henry Blore.Volume 3. E. P. MITCHELL / H. G. WELLS. -The Tachypomp (1881) by Edward Page Mitchell. The first story to use a machine for time travel. .-The Chronic Argonauts (1888) by H. G. Wells. An inventor takes a companion in his time machine. The companion narrates the story of their subsequent adventures. -The Time Machine (1895) H. G. Wells. An inventor creates a time machine and travels to the year 802,701 AD. There, humans have evolved into two species, Morlocks and Eloi. Volume 4. L. CARROLL. / M. TWAIN.-Sylvie and Bruno (1889) by Lewis Carroll. A watch both tells and determines time. -A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889) by Mark Twain. A man of the 19th century travels back to 528 AD in King Arthur's time. "Looking Backward: 2000-1887" is a utopian novel by Edward Bellamy, a journalist and writer from Chicopee Falls, Massachusetts; it was first published in 1888. It was the third largest bestseller of its time, after Uncle Tom's Cabin and Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ. It influenced many intellectuals, and appears by title in many socialist writings of the day. "It is one of the few books ever published that created almost immediately on its appearance a political mass movement". In the United States alone, over 162 "Bellamy Clubs" sprang up to discuss and propagate the book's ideas. Owing to its commitment to the nationalization of private property and the desire to avoid use of the term "socialism", this political movement came to be known as Nationalism - not to be confused with the political concept of nationalism. The novel also inspired several utopian communities.The novel "A Dream of John Ball" describes a dream and time travel encounter between the medieval and modern worlds, thus contrasting the ethics of medieval and contemporary culture. A time-traveller tells Ball of the decline of feudalism and the rise of the Industrial Revolution. Ball realizes that in the nineteenth century his hopes for an egalitarian society have yet to be fulfilled. A parallel can be drawn with the novel's close contemporary-A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889) by Mark Twain. Unlike Twain's novel, which depicted early-Medieval England as a violent and chaotic Dark Age, Morris depicts the Middle Ages in a positive light, seeing it as a golden, if brief, period when peasants were prosperous and happy and guilds protected workers from exploitation. This positive portrayal of the Medieval period is a recurring theme in Morris' literary and artistic oeuvre, from the largely pastoral and craftsman based economies of the prose romances, to his similar dream vision of Britain's utopian future, News from Nowhere (1889).
