News from Nowhere

The most well-known prose work by William Morris News from Nowhere (1890) is the only notable English utopia since Thomas More's. In the story William Guest a traveller from the nineteenth century encounters a socialist future that is decentralised and kind. These Chapters from a Utopian Novel describe his travel across London and up the Thames to Kelmscott Manor Morris's own country home in Oxfordshire set more than a century after a revolutionary upheaval in 1952. Morris' book is not only an eloquent declaration of his egalitarian beliefs but also a unique contribution to the utopian tradition drawing on the works of John Ruskin and Karl Marx. Morris's desire to change how people interact with the natural world and his rejection of state socialism give News from Nowhere a special resonance with contemporary readers. Based on Morris' considerable adjustments to the first edition the 1891 version serves as the basis for this text.