Blackwell Reference Online

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Dystopian literature might be defined as imaginative literature that constructs flawed fictional societies the shortcomings of which satirize ideal utopian societies, or specific real-world societies, or both. Dystopian fiction became a major mode in the twentieth century, though it has roots that go back still further. This is especially the case with English literature, which was at the forefront of the turn from utopian to dystopian visions of the future at the end of the nineteenth century, especially in the early works of H. G. Wells. In any case, Aldous Huxley's Brave New World (1932) can be considered the first truly important twentieth-century dystopian novel in English, while it joins Evgeny Zamyatin's We (1924) and George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) to constitute the three central works of modern dystopian narrative. Orwell's novel is probably the most important and influential of the three. Indeed, one could make a viable case that Nineteen Eighty-Four is not only the central work of English dystopian fiction but also one of the pivotal works in all of twentieth-century global culture. All subsequent English dystopian fiction has been influenced to some extent by Orwell's vision, though it is also important to recognize that Orwell's work itself had numerous important predecessors, especially in the numerous antifascist dystopian satires produced by British ... log in or subscribe to read full text