{{Short description|1885 science fiction novel}} {{Infobox book | name = After London; Or, Wild England | image = File:1905 cover after london.jpg | caption = Cover of the 1905 edition | author = Richard Jefferies | country = United Kingdom | language = English | series = | genre = Science fiction | publisher = Cassell and Company | release_date = 1885 | pages = | isbn = | preceded_by = | followed_by = | wikisource = }}
'''''After London; Or, Wild England: In Two Parts: Part 1 – The Relapse into Barbarism; Part II – Wild England''''' is a novel by Richard Jefferies, published in 1885 by Cassell and Company.<ref name=":0">{{Cite web |last1=Clute |first1=John |last2=Eggeling |first2=John |date=2024 |title=SFE: Jefferies, Richard |url=https://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/jefferies_richard |access-date=2025-03-15 |website=sf-encyclopedia.com}}</ref> It is an early work of science fiction, set in near future England, near sunk London, a century after a mysterious disaster caused the fall of modern civilization and reverted English society to the medieval level.
== History == It is likely the original draft of the novel was much longer, and that it was cut from three volumes to a single one due to publisher's demand.<ref name=":9" />
== Plot summary ==
The book has two parts. The first five chapters, in the section entitled "The Relapse into Barbarism", purport to be the account of the fall of civilisation after "the passage of an enormous dark body through space" has tilted the Earth's axis. Set a century or so after the disaster, it portrays the consequences, with a description of nature reclaiming England: farmers' fields becoming overrun by forest, domesticated animals running wild, roads and towns filled with decaying buildings and overgrowth, and the city of London reverting to lake and poisonous swampland. The society described in the novel is dystopian and medieval; much of the populace are either illiterate peasants or slaves living under the rule of a corrupt nobility.<ref name=":2">{{citation |last1=Kü |title=Suffering Nature, Suffering Humans: After London As A Portrayal of Anthropocentric Violence |date=2023 |work=Shades of Violence: Multidisciplinary Reflections on Violence in Literature, Culture and Arts |pages=145–159 |url=https://www.ceeol.com/search/chapter-detail?id=1205833 |access-date=15 March 2025 |publisher=Transnational Press London |language=English |last2=Baysal |first2=Bra}}</ref><ref name=":1">{{cite journal |last=Sumpter |first=Caroline |date=1 September 2011 |title=Machiavelli Writes the Future: History and Progress in Richard Jefferies's After London |url=https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/08905495.2011.598669 |journal=Nineteenth-Century Contexts |volume=33 |issue=4 |pages=315–331 |doi=10.1080/08905495.2011.598669|url-access=subscription }}</ref><ref name=":4">{{cite journal |last=Plotz |first=John |date=1 March 2015 |title=Speculative Naturalism and the Problem of Scale: Richard Jefferies's After London, After Darwin |url=https://read.dukeupress.edu/modern-language-quarterly/article-abstract/76/1/31/47270/Speculative-Naturalism-and-the-Problem-of-Scale |journal=Modern Language Quarterly |volume=76 |issue=1 |pages=31–56 |doi=10.1215/00267929-2827538|url-access=subscription }}</ref><ref name=":5">{{cite journal |last=Mizin |first=Sarita Olga |date=22 March 2019 |title=After London; or Wild England. |url=https://go.gale.com/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CA593751840&sid=googleScholar&v=2.1&it=r&linkaccess=abs&issn=10520406&p=AONE&sw=w&userGroupName=anon~571f7ded&aty=open-web-entry |journal=Nineteenth-Century Prose |language=English |volume=46 |issue=1 |pages=261–265}}</ref><ref name=":7">{{Cite news |last=Dirda |first=Michael |date=2020-05-27 |title=Review {{!}} A look at the post-apocalyptic world envisioned in the novel 'After London' |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/a-look-at-the-post-apocalyptic-world-envisioned-in-the-novel-after-london/2020/05/27/e6161a76-9f7d-11ea-81bb-c2f70f01034b_story.html |access-date=2025-03-25 |newspaper=The Washington Post |language=en-US |issn=0190-8286}}</ref>
The second, much longer part, "Wild England", consisting of 28 chapters, is largely a straightforward adventure featuring an aristocratic protagonist, Felix Aquila, set many years later in the wild landscape and society. Aquila, the second son of a nobleman, falls in love and sets out on an expedition to find his fortune. He eventually becomes the leader of a band of tribal, nomadic shepherds.<ref name=":2" /><ref name=":1" /><ref name=":4" /><ref name=":5" /><ref name=":7" /><ref name=":8">{{Cite web |last=Longley |first=Maria |date=2018-01-28 |title=Book Review: "After London" by Richard Jefferies |url=https://www.gigl.org.uk/2018/01/28/book-review-after-london-by-richard-jefferies/ |access-date=2025-03-25 |website=GIGL |language=en-GB}}</ref>
== Reception == The work was a popular novel in its time,<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":9">{{Cite book |last1=Jefferies |first1=Richard |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.3366/j.ctt1pwt35d |title=Richard Jefferies, After London; or Wild England |last2=Mark |first2=Frost |date=2017 |publisher=Edinburgh University Press |isbn=978-1-4744-0239-2 |pages=vii-xlvi |chapter=Introduction |jstor=10.3366/j.ctt1pwt35d }}</ref> although "contemporary critics were generally confused and disappointed by the book's conclusion"<ref name=":1" /> and preferred its first part.<ref name=":9" /> Critics dissatisfied with the second part often make an exception of chapters 22–24, which go beyond recreation of a medieval world to give a disturbing and surreal description of the site of the fallen city.<ref>Thomas (1909), 256 "[The Relapse into Barbarism] reveals an unsuspected strength of remorseless logic and restraint"; Fowles (1980), pp. xviii–xix; Miller and Matthews (1993), p. 440.</ref> The novel was criticized, in particular, by an early biographer of Jefferies, Walter Besant, but praised by another, Q. D. Leavis.<ref name=":9" />
The work also received more modern reviews; most recently following a new edition (by Edinburgh University Press, 2017). Maria Longley reviewed it for the Greenspace Information for Greater London. She felt that "the human elements of the novel haven't stood the test of time" but positively commented on the "carefully observed wildlife descriptions", writing that she "loved the imagining of a wilder England".<ref name=":8" />
Michael Dirda reviewed it for ''The Washington Post''. He considered the "Dantesque" chapters in which the protagonists explores the remains of London "brilliantly imagined" and "the high point of Jefferies's book", comparing them to "the phantasmagoric final chapters of Poe's "Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym" or the terminal vision of the world's end in H.G. Wells's "The Time Machine".<ref name=":7" />
Violet Hudson reviewed it for ''The Times Literary Supplement'', referring to it as "Jefferies's... great novel", praising his "floridly beautiful world".<ref>{{Cite web |last=Hudson |first=Violet |date=November 24, 2017 |title=After London; Sport in the Fields and Woods {{!}} Book review {{!}} The TLS |url=https://www.the-tls.co.uk/lives/autobiography/waterfall-in-the-sky |access-date=2025-03-25 |website=TLS |language=en-GB}}</ref>
Mark Frost, in his introduction to the 2017 edition, wrote that the book "can often dazzle, sometimes infuriate, and always intrigue".<ref name=":9" />
John Eggeling and John Clute describe the book as "an important example of Victorian [[Science fiction|s[cience] f[iction]]]";<ref name=":0" /> similarly, Darko Suvin referred to it as "a near masterpiece of Victorian SF".<ref name=":9" />
== Analysis ==
The novel has been subject to numerous scholarly analyses. Mark Frost noted that the book is "gaining an ever more prominent place in studies of Victorian culture".<ref name=":9" />
Many analyses of the book focused on its theme of destroyed London.<ref name=":1" /> Oliver Lindner, for example, looked at how the novel portrays the author's "pessimistic outlook on the future of the city".<ref name=":3">{{Cite journal |last=Lindner |first=Oliver |date=1 July 2006 |title='After London': The Death of the Metropolis in the Fiction of Richard Jefferies |url=https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/zaa-2006-0303/html |journal=Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik |language=de |volume=54 |issue=3 |pages=249–263 |doi=10.1515/zaa-2006-0303|url-access=subscription }}</ref>
The book has been described as difficult to categorize, particularly in the context of 19th century works, as it is unlike most of the works of its time.<ref name=":5" /><ref name=":9" /> Frost wrote that the work "overspills its various generic and thematic categorisations, and is happily unlike any other book", calling it an experimental novel, and later noting that the main themes of the novel are "science fiction, dystopia, Darwinism, romance, national identity, naturalism, and pastoral".<ref name=":9" /> The novel is composed of two distinct parts; the first, according to Plotz, features "naturalist writing in the vein of Gilbert White", whereas the second has a more traditional quest structure.<ref name=":4" /> It has been called a defining work for the apocalyptic<ref name=":9" /> Ruined Earth genre,<ref>{{Cite web |last1=Nicholls |first1=Peter |last2=Clute |first2=John |last3=Langford |first3=David |date=2025 |title=SFE: Ruined Earth |url=https://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/ruined_earth |access-date=2025-03-15 |website=sf-encyclopedia.com}}</ref> the disaster novel genre,<ref name=":2" /><ref name=":7" /> the climate fiction<ref name=":6">{{Cite journal |last=Tait |first=Adrian |date=2021-02-04 |title=Environmental Crisis, Cli-fi, and the Fate of Humankind in Richard Jefferies's After London and Robert Harris' The Second Sleep |url=https://exchanges.warwick.ac.uk/index.php/exchanges/article/view/554 |journal=Exchanges: The Interdisciplinary Research Journal |language=en |volume=8 |issue=2 |pages=69–83 |doi=10.31273/eirj.v8i2.554 |issn=2053-9665|doi-access=free }}</ref> genre, and the anthropocene fiction genre.<ref name=":2" /> It has also been described as related to time travel and catastrophe fiction genres,<ref name=":1" /> as well as a science fiction dystopia, and received a number of less common descriptions.<ref name=":9" /> Its setting has also been described as related to pastoral fiction;<ref name=":0" /> however, it is far from idyllic, portraying various scenes of savagery and barbarism.<ref name=":1" /> Frost suggested that it might be better described as an anti-pastoral fiction.<ref name=":9" /> Sarita Olga Mizin noted similarities to the lost world genre, in its detailed description of the new locations and creatures.<ref name=":5" /> John Plotz saw the novel as an early example of naturalist fiction.<ref name=":4" />
Caroline Sumpter argued that Jefferies's novel was significantly influenced by the thought of Machiavelli.<ref name=":1" /> In turn, the book has been influential on a number of works, such as utopian romances such as William Henry Hudson's "A Crystal Age", (1887),<ref name=":7" /> the better known William Morris's ''News from'' ''Nowhere'' (1890),<ref name=":1" /><ref name=":4" /><ref name=":7" /> and M.P. Shiel's post-apocalyptic novel, ''The Purple Cloud'' (1901).<ref>"In writing ''The Purple Cloud'', Shiel drew heavily on another fine novel, Richard Jefferies' ''After London''".John Sutherland, "Introduction" to ''The Purple Cloud'', Penguin Classics, 2012. {{ISBN|9780141196428}}</ref> Although Jefferies's novel has inspired a number of utopias, the work itself is not a utopia.<ref name=":9" />
Sumpter sees the novel as questioning the very notion of progress, questioning some earlier critics views that the book endorses revolutionary vision of progressive history.<ref name=":1" /> Similarly, Lidner wrote that the book "represents the bleakest prediction" about humanity's future in contemporary literature, and was "a thorough shattering of the Victorian beliefs in progress and technology".<ref name=":3" /> Frost, less strongly, observes that the work is "a powerful register of decidedly mixed feelings about Victorian humanity".<ref name=":9" /> Adrian Tait wrote that the novel, while concerned with the consequences of technological progress, stops short of being a warning of things to come, dwelling on the disaster brought by it, or predicting an impending and inevitable doom.<ref name=":6" />
Kübra Baysal, writing in 2023, noted that the novel still has value for modern readers, as an example of an early work discussing ecological and sociological implications of anthropocenic change in the form of a warning about destruction brought by human civilization.<ref name=":2" /> Likewise, others have situated the book in the context of early ecocriticial literature, given its focus on nature reclaiming formerly urbanized parts of the land.<ref name=":3" /><ref name=":5" /><ref name=":9" /> Mizin, however, points out that the state of nature is not romanticized in the novel, and in fact it is portrayed as dangerous to humans.<ref name=":5" />
Michael Kramp analyzed the main hero of the novel, Felix Aquila, through the lenses of feminist theory.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Kramp |first=Michael |date=2019 |title=Richard Jefferies's After London; or Wild England and the Limits of Liberal Colonialism: Reinscribing Hegemonic Masculinity |url=https://muse.jhu.edu/article/710526 |journal=English Literature in Transition, 1880-1920 |volume=62 |issue=2 |pages=244–264 |issn=1559-2715}}</ref>
==References== {{reflist}}
== Bibliography ==
* John Fowles, "Introduction", in R. Jefferies, ''After London'' (Oxford: OUP, 1980), vii–xxi. {{ISBN|0-19-281266-1}} * E. Thomas, ''Richard Jefferies: His Life and Work'' (London: Hutchinson, 1909). * G. Miller and H. Matthews, ''Richard Jefferies, A bibliographical study'' (Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1993). {{ISBN|0-85967-918-7}}
== External links == {{Gutenberg book|no=13944|name=After London; Or, Wild England by Richard Jefferies}} *{{Internet Archive|afterlondonorwil00jeff|After London; or, Wild England|3}}
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Category:1885 British novels Category:1885 speculative fiction novels Category:1880s science fiction novels Category:Novels set in London Category:British post-apocalyptic novels Category:Experimental literature Category:Dystopian novels Category:Naturalist novels Category:Climate change novels Category:Victorian novels