• “Strangely Inorganic Patriotism

    Author(s):
    Ben Carver (see profile)
    Date:
    2019
    Subject(s):
    British literature, Nineteenth century, Literary form--Study and teaching, Journalism
    Item Type:
    Article
    Tag(s):
    invasion fiction; future war, 19th-century British literature, Genre studies
    Permanent URL:
    http://dx.doi.org/10.17613/w0v1-km66
    Abstract:
    William Le Queux’s and George Griffith’s future war narratives, published in Alfred Harmsworth’s and Cyril Arthur Pearson’s magazines and newspapers in the 1890s and 1900s, imagined a war to come that with hindsight they seemed to hasten or provoke. This article reassesses the genre’s literary history by attending to its proliferation at the turn of the century in the popular press—a hyper-competitive print environment that was very different from Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, which had influentially published George T. Chesney’s “The Battle of Dorking” in 1871. In the “new journalism,” these narratives were published serially, surrounded by alarmist assessment of the nation’s readiness war, confirmed through curated correspondence with readers, and underscored by a celebration of technological modernity. The invasion fiction became a finely tuned machine that served expansionist ambitions of their publications, which aimed to enlist new readers in the name of national interest.
    Notes:
    This is a pre-print (pre-peer review) version of the article.
    Metadata:
    xml
    Status:
    Published
    Last Updated:
    4 years ago
    License:
    All Rights Reserved
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