Richard Jefferies, After London; Or Wild England

ISBN-13: 9781474402392 / Angielski / Twarda / 2017 / 256 str.

Mark Frost

Opis

Richard Jefferies' After London is uncanny and intriguing, an adventure story, quest romance, dystopia, and Darwinian novel rolled into one, but also a pioneering work of Victorian science fiction. Imagining a mysterious natural catastrophe that plunges its people into a barbaric future, Jefferies remarkable novel drowns and destroys London and depicts a challenging 'Wild England' dominated by nature and filled with evolved animals and devolved humans. Of its time but also distinctively modern, After London can, in its uneasy expression of Victorian and post-Victorian anxieties about industrial development, urbanisation, natural resources, and climate, be regarded as one of the first novels of the Anthropocene.

This new critical edition provides one of the earliest examples of a global catastrophe novel that is part of a flowering of nineteenth-century science fiction. It situates After London in a tradition of mid-late Victorian texts that respond to the evolutionary theories of Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace and responds to a host of other key social, political, and cultural issues of the period.

Spis treści

1. Introduction; 2. Further Reading; 3. A Richard Jefferies Chronology; 4. After London; Or Wild England; Part I: The Relapse Into Barbarism; I. The Great Forest; II. The Animals; III. Men Of The Woods; IV. The Invaders; V. The Lake; Part II: Wild England; I. Sir Felix; II. The House Of Aquila; III. The Stockade; IV. The Canoe; V. Baron Aquila; VI. The Forest Track; VII. The Forest Track Continued; VIII. Thyma Castle; IX. Superstitions; X. The Feast; XI. Aurora; XII. Night In The Forest; XIII. Sailing Away; XIV. The Straits; XV. Sailing Onwards; XVI. The City; XVII. The Camp; XVIII. The King’s Levy; XIX. Fighting; XX. In Danger; XXI. A Voyage; XXII. Discoveries; XXIII. Strange Things; XXIV. Fiery Vapours; XXV. The Shepherds; XXVI. Bow And Arrow; XXVII. Surprised; XXVIII. For Aurora; 5. Notes On The Text; 6. Appendices: Supplementary Writings By Richard Jefferies.