William Morris’s Artful Utopia

This chapter examines William Morris's News from Nowhere, a fictional response to Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward. News from Nowhere was Morris's attempt to expose what he perceived to be the narrow, complacent, and authoritarian dimensions of Looking Backward. It served as climax of the utopianism that Morris had been engaged in for decades. Throughout his adult life, Morris rejected central Victorian beliefs—not only religious belief but also the belief in progress, the embrace of technology, and the divisions between work and leisure, art and design, literature and politics, intellectuals and workers. Morris's entire career, including his vision of utopia, is presaged by John Ruskin's essay “The Nature of Gothic,” from The Stones of Venice (1851–1853). This chapter discusses contradictions in News from Nowhere and how the book tackles issues such as crime, education, labor, politics, and technological advances.