Lost to Time: The Political Meaning Behind News from Nowhere
By Arianny Grullon Rojas
(First Year Writing Award, First Place, Informational Writing)
In the novel News from Nowhere, the narrator, William Guest, travels into the future to learn about the political, social, and economic ideals that the author of the novel, William Morris, believes will create a utopian world. It is ironic that to discern the political realizations William Guest realizes by the end of the story, we must travel back into the English nineteenth-century political landscape. At face value, News is a science fiction novel describing a world in which the citizens of England have eschewed many of the economic and political systems of the industrial revolution. The novel takes on a new meaning when combined with the historical context of
William Morris’s involvement in the Socialist and Marxist movements. Having first released News in a political newspaper, Morris uses the text to explain and argue for changes to the Industrial Age that, in his opinion, would help society flourish. The novel’s intended audience, prominent members such as Thomas More and Karl Marx, with their knowledge of the Socialist and Marxist movements and ideologies, would understand the analogous message between the state of the future world in the novel and the social and political agenda Morris advocates. However, readers today, without this historical context, would see only a uniquely constructed world akin to the universes of Star Wars or Lord of the Rings. The message of the News goes beyond the description of a utopian society. Considering Morris’ background as a political activist, his progressive views on the harms of industrialism, and the views of contemporary political figures in the 19th century, News from Nowhere is not merely a work of fiction but also a manifesto of change and critique of capitalism, an interpretation the modern reader can understand by understanding the historical context surrounding the novel.
Despite writing novels like News and poems like The Earthly Paradise, Morris is more commonly known as an artist, craftsman, and socialist activist during the nineteenth century. He was a leading figure in the Arts and Crafts Movement with detailed and hand-crafted designs. One of Morris’s most famous works is the Kelmscott Chaucer, an intricately illustrated edition of the Canterbury Tales Morris designed and printed in 1891. The book features traditional hand printing and techniques and is hand-illuminated with gold and silver. Morris also created wallpaper designs famous for their intricate patterns and vibrant colors. He believed the wallpaper should be as beautiful as the house it adorns. One of Morris’s most notable wallpaper designs is the “Strawberry Thief” pattern. Using woodblock printing, a style in which artists use carved wooden blocks to press designs onto textiles or paper, Morris repeated a motif of birds stealing strawberries from a fruit tree to create this unique pattern. Besides book illustrations and wallpaper designs, he also designed several buildings, including his home, Red Home. Located on the outskirts of London, the building featured Gothic Revival elements of architecture, such as pointed arches, elaborate carvings, and stained-glass windows. On the inside, Morris decorated his home with his own wallpaper designs. His book illustrations, wallpapers, and architectural designs demonstrate close attention to detail and subscribe to the belief that beautiful art and goods should be made by hand and specially designed. This led to Britain’s middle and upper classes commissioning Morris and his firm, Morris and Co, for decorative art.
As Morris and Co. grew, the industrial practices of the nineteenth century and the division of the workers at his own company shaped his political and economic views. The growth of his firm created two types of workers: craftsmen, who earned a fixed rate for each unit produced, and clerks, who earned a portion of the profits. This created an unequal system where the clerks would make more than the craftsmen through profit-sharing. Meanwhile, factories opened all over England. These factories, where workers churned out goods for over 12 hours daily, prioritized production and profit over worker safety and wages. Many factories also employed children. Besides exploitive practices of workers, the factories of 19th century England also polluted the air and water (Rafferty). In London, tens of thousands of people died of cholera because of the pollution from factories and flushing toilets flowing straight into the river Thames (The Science Museum Group). Furthermore, coal, which powered all factories during the industrial revolution, caused air pollution and smog across England. This increased the English population’s infant death rates and respiratory diseases (Hanlon). As a business owner, Morris saw the industrial revolution’s effect on the living conditions in England. As described in his essay, “How I Became a Socialist,” Morris writes,
Apart from the desire to produce beautiful things, the leading passion of my life has been and is hatred of modern civilization… its enemies of the commonwealth so rich, its stupendous organization – for the misery of life! Its contempt of simple pleasures which everyone could enjoy but for its folly? Its eyeless vulgarity which has destroyed art, the one certain solace of labour? … The whole face of things was changed to me by that discovery, and all I had to do then in order to become a Socialist” (9)
This passage exemplified Morris’s criticism of the capitalist system and how he believed it was exploitative and unjust. He believed that handcrafted products expressed human creativity and were considered art. However, capitalism destroyed creativity to maximize productivity. The increase in wealth, Morris explains, only went to “enemies of the commonwealth.” Concerned about the life of workers, William Morris sought to create political change through the socialist movement.
Influenced by his experiences as an artist, designer, and business owner, Morris wrote News as part of his socialist activism. He wanted to share his political ideas by describing how they could change society if implemented. Even though novels mainly provided entertainment during the nineteenth century, Morris’s publishing of News in the Commonweal highlights the political nature of the book. As a frequent voice on the columns of the Commonweal, a newspaper distributed by the Socialist League, Morris chose to serialize News in the socialist newspaper. He was one of the main contributors to the Socialist League’s newspaper. Holzman describes Morris’s involvement: “A usual issue of the paper featured a front-page article by Morris, typically called ‘Notes on Passing Events,’ and frequently included a second article by him” (590). When the Commonweal released a new entry to Morris’s novel, the serializations replaced his political commentary. Holzman describes the purpose of News in the Commonweal: During the weeks that Commonweal was serializing Morris’s A Dream of John Ball, The Pilgrims of Hope, or News from Nowhere, their installments stood in place of most of his political commentary – stood in place of them in two senses: they took up the room that he would have used for other purposes, and they were another form of that continuing political commentary. Thus his imaginative works published in Commonweal were in no sense a diversion from his usual political writings; they were, perhaps not simply, but yet quite directly, political writings in another genre. (591)
The fact that serializations of News replaced Morris’s political commentary in the Commonweal underlies his intent. Morris included the novel to fulfill the same purpose as his political commentary: to show his audience what the world could look like if it realized his political, social, and economic ideals. Holzman describes Morris’s novels in the Commonweal as “political writings” (591), a purpose the novel might lose in a medium other than a Socialist League newspaper. While the modern-day reader views News from Nowhere in its complete, novelized form and might miss the socialist concepts, readers of the Commonweal in 19th-century London would understand the political motives behind Morris’s serialized novel.
Furthermore, Morris chose to base the plot of News around a utopia, which in 19th-century literature also had political implications. The political nature of utopias is epitomized by Looking Backward, by Edward Bellamy, a potential influence on News. Popular in the United States and set in Boston, Looking Backward has a parallel plot to News from Nowhere. The main character/narrator is transported into the future and learns about how the future functions as a socialist utopia. After Looking Backward was published, “nationalist clubs” arose in the United States to discuss the novel’s socialist ideas. Several utopian societies in the United States also sought to fulfill the ideals influenced by Looking Backward. Other utopian works, such as Thomas More’s Utopia, all sought to use a fictional world to describe how society could function more effectively by embracing different ideals (Montfort). Understanding the political nature of utopian literature and seeing its effect on society, Morris wrote News partly as political commentary. As Kumar writes,
News from Nowhere (1890), it is well known, was written in indignant response to Edward Bellamy’s socialist Utopia Looking Backward, published to huge popular acclaim in America in 1888. Morris, after a decade of energetic proselytizing for the socialist cause, was appalled at Bellamy’s vision of socialism. Reviewing Looking Backward in The Commonweal, he described Bellamy’s scheme as “State Communism, worked by the very extreme of national centralization.” (Kumar 133)
The reception of Looking Backward and Morris’s subsequent criticism provide additional context for the creation of News. Because Morris’s ideas were counter to Bellamy’s, as Kumar notes,
Morris wrote the novel in response to Looking Backward. Despite not being clearly stated in the novel, Morris’s political intentions in News from Nowhere are more clearly defined when considering the utopian theme of the novel. Utopias meant much more than a literary device – political activists used them to spread ideas and persuade readers.
Besides the macro-elements of political intention in News from Nowhere, the novel’s political, social, and economic themes also support the book’s purpose in conveying Morris’s political ideals to his audience. In his essay, “How I Became a Socialist,” Morris describes his version of socialism as a condition of society in which there should be neither rich nor poor, neither master nor master’s man, neither idle nor overworked, neither brain-sick brain workers, nor heart-sick hand workers, in a word, in which all men would be living in equality of condition, and would manage their affairs unwastefully, and with full consciousness that harm to one would mean harm to all – the realization at last of the meaning of the word commonwealth. (9)
Morris wanted everyone to be equal, to have the same quality of life, the same number of resources, and a collective sense of belonging in society. He developed this thinking by viewing England’s industrialization and its effects on the working class. At his firm, he felt conflicted between the success of the company and an egalitarian distribution of wealth among workers (MacCarthy 456). He also felt that workers and craftsmen should be able to input their creativity into their work. The advent of machines and assembly lines transformed workers into performance metrics and eliminated any input of creativity. Morris translates much of his worldview into political ideas in News. He uses the utopian future world to describe how his ideas would counteract capitalism’s perceived harm to society.
Morris explains his economic theory of socialism by describing, in his opinion, how the world would be after following his principles through his novel. In News, one of the first things William Guest, the novel’s narrator, notices in the future world is the reduction of industrialization. As Guest views the future world for the first time, he describes his new surroundings: “the soap-works with their smoke-vomiting chimneys were gone; the engineer’s works gone; the lead-works gone, and no sound of riveting and hammering came down the west wind from Thorneycroft’s” (5). As described in the novel, in Morris’s ideal society, no more factories oppress people and pollute the environment. The water is clear enough to swim in, and the environment resembles an idyllic countryside of “fourteenth-century life.” In the old world, the novel states that people tried to maximize profits and make the largest amount of goods possible with the least resources. Labor-saving machines only created more work and reduced the quality of products (60). To fix this, the citizens of the future world choose which jobs they want to work and with freedom aiding their creative expression in all that they do to increase the quality of goods. The ideal future economy also merges art with labor. According to Brantlinger, describing the merge of work and art,
“popular art” would be indistinguishable from common labor; there would be no need for systems of substitute gratifications because life itself would be gratifying. And News from Nowhere, in which Morris envisions the future reign of “popular art,” is itself “art” in no ordinary sense of that term: it ceases to be a work of “art” to the degree that it succeeds in portraying a state in which “art” is unnecessary as a separate activity because all life has become art. (38).
Brantlinger’s passage shows the future state of the world as described in News and how it is aligned with Morris’s worldview. Because of Morris’s attention to detail in his art and work and his use of handcrafted techniques like woodblock printing, he wanted his utopian world to embody his perception of work. As an artist, Morris viewed all his work as art and sought to persuade the world that doing so would benefit human productivity and happiness. This is the same principle of work described in News, as Brantlinger explains. Because people are free to choose what they want to do, and because there are no machines, people are able to express their creativity and focus on doing their craft well. Lastly, William Morris believed that all members of society should have enough money to afford what they need. This idea is expressed in the economy and market system in News. As Guest initially tries to pay his host for breakfast, the host is confused and replies that society no longer buys and sells goods for money (24). The host’s response, “ferrying and giving people casts about the water is my business which I would do for anybody; so to take gifts in connection with it would look very queer” (7), implies that the economy in a socialist world would only need people to do their jobs. There would be no use for money, and everyone would have the goods they need. This system combines Morris’s reasons for being a socialist: capitalism and industrialism degraded human life (Morris, “Socialist” 9) with his egalitarian business ideals. The system's success and its effects on the people living in the future world serve as a message to readers that this could be a potential way of life. This highlights the prominence that Morris’s socialist economic message plays in the novel’s overall plot.
The government in the future world of News from Nowhere is also radically different from that of 19th-century England. The difference highlights the political change Morris hopes to create, but only if the reader understands the political landscape of 19th-century England. In conversation with Guest, the old man describes the utopian government of the novel as “our present parliament would be hard to house in one place because the whole people is our parliament.” Their exchange on politics explains how a complete democracy would impact society versus a centralized government with a parliamentary system. In the system of 19th-century England, the old man and Guest conclude:
Now as to those Law-Courts. Were they places of fair dealing according to the ideas of the day? Had a poor man a good chance of defending his property and person in them? It is a commonplace that even rich men looked upon a law-suit as a dire misfortune, even if they gained the case; and as for a poor one – why, it was considered a miracle of justice and beneficence if a poor man who had once got into the clutches of the law escaped prison or utter ruin… the government by law-courts and police, which as the real government of the nineteenth century, was not a great success even to the people of that day, living under a class system which proclaimed inequality and poverty as the law of God and the bond which held the world together. (48).
Through this conversation, Morris explains how the English government, primarily the courts, took advantage of the poor and only benefitted the rich. The poor could not defend themselves in court. The government catered to the rich by sustaining inequality. Morris describes how the utopia of News from Nowhere was created to promote political change. This is potentially a call to action for how readers of the Commonweal, who were all socialists, could also create political change in England. As Morris writes in the Commonweal:
These men thought it possible to regenerate Society by laying before it its shortcomings, follies, and injustice, and by teaching through precept and example certain schemes of reconstruction built up from the aspirations and insights of the teachers themselves. They had not learned to recognize the sequence of events that forces social changes on mankind, whether conscious of its force or not, but believed that their schemes would win their way to general adoption by men’s perception of their inherent reasonableness. They hoped to convert people to Socialism, to accept it consciously and formally, by showing them the contrast between the confusion and misery of civilization and the order and happiness of the world they foresaw (Morris, “Socialism” 242).
The actions described in the newspaper explain the purpose of Morris’s writings in the Commonweal. In Morris’s novel, the world of News is also created by activists who converted society to socialism by explaining the inequality and misery present in civilization. The recurring theme of political change in both Morris’s newspaper commentary and his novel emphasizes how Morris wants to use the newspaper to educate readers on socialist principles to create political change. The novel highlights a different way of life, a contrast Morris hopes will evoke political change by influencing his audience. Readers of the serialized version of New in the nineteenth-century would understand the political undertones of the book. As Holzman writes, “An engaged observer could have so accurately depicted the concrete conditions of reform, counter-revolution, and revolt given in News from Nowhere” (Holzman 599). Without this historical context, a modern reader of News from Nowhere might think that the description of political change is just a clever plot leading up to a different society of the future. However, William Morris's message is rooted in the present; he shows his readers why change needs to happen and how to create political change to achieve his ideal society.
The purpose of media has changed from the 19th century to today. Modern readers can access countless books digitally and in bookstores or libraries. Because of the wide variety of thoughts and ideas in the modern collection of books, the valid message of a text might be lost through time. News from Nowhere, in which the narrator travels into a futuristic utopia, might be classified as a science fiction novel akin to Hunger Games, which also occurs in the future and features a radically different economic and political landscape. However, the artistic, political, and corporate background of William Morris and his sponsorship and contributions to the Commonweal provide greater depth to the meaning of News from Nowhere. By understanding the reasoning that leads up to the economic, social, and political ideals which classify Morris’s Utopia, the reader can understand the true purpose for which Morris writes the novel.
Works Cited
Brantlinger, Patrick. “News from Nowhere’: Morris’s Socialist Anti-Novel.” Victorian Studies, vol. 19, no. 1, 1975, pp. 35–49.
Hanlon, W. Walker. “Coal Smoke and the Costs of the Industrial Revolution.” National Bureau of Economic Research, 2016, pp. 1-6.
Henderson, Phillip Prichard. William Morris. 29 September 2022. 7 December 2022.
<https://www.britannica.com/biography/William-Morris-British-artist-and-author>
Holzman, Michael. “Anarchism and Utopia: William Morris’s News from Nowhere.” ELH, vol. 51, no. 3, 1984, pp. 589-603.
Kumar, Krishan. “News from Nowhere: The Renewal of Utopia.” History of Political Thought, vol. 14, no. 1, 1993, pp. 133-143.
MacCarthy, Fiona. William Morris: A Life for Our Time. University of Michigan Press, 1995.
Montfort, Nick. Writing the Future with Utopias. 25 July 2019.
Morris, William. How I Became a Socialist. Twentieth Century Press Ltd, 1896.
—. News from Nowhere. Kelmscott Press, 1892.
—. “Socialism From The Root Up – Chapter 13 – The Utopists: Owen, Saint Simon, and Fourier.” Commonweal, 30 October 1886, pp. 242–243.
Rafferty, John. The Rise of the Machines: Pros and Cons of the Industrial Revolution. 30 September, 2017 and 5 December, 2022.
The Science Museum Group. Cholera in Victorian London. 30 July 2019. 5 December 2022.