Read more
A study of British and American Utopian writing of the 1800s in the context of developments in real architectural, political, and cultural life. The book studies utopian visions published in the UK and the USA in the 1800s by writers such Robert Owen, James Silk Buckingham, Edward Bellamy, and William Morris.
List of contents
- Introduction: The Dream Before the Dream
- 1: "God Made the Country, Man Made the Town": The Foundations of Modern Suburban Utopias
- 2: Socialist Schemes and Suburban Dreams
- 3: Urban Non-Fiction and Suburban Science Fiction
- 4: Empires of Hygiene and Horror
- 5: The Republic of the Future
- 6: Architecture Under Nationalism
- 7: Gardening in the Apocalypse
- Conclusion: "And Was Jerusalem Builded Here?"
About the author
Nathaniel Robert Walker is Assistant Professor of Architectural History at the College of Charleston. He earned his PhD at Brown University, and studies the relationships between architecture, aesthetics, public space, urban design, political power, social fabric, spiritual longing, and dreams of the future, both utopian and apocalyptic. He has published essays in ARRIS, Buildings and Landscapes, the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Traditional Dwellings and Settlements Review, Utopian Studies, and a number of edited volumes, including Suffragette City: Women, Politics and the Built Environment, which he co-edited. He has curated two exhibitions dealing with the connections between architecture, urbanism, and human dreams: Building Expectations: Past and Present Visions of the Architectural Future (Bell Gallery, Providence), and The City Luminous: Architectures of Hope in an Age of Fear (City Gallery, Charleston, co-curated with J. Streit).
Summary
A study of British and American Utopian writing of the 1800s in the context of developments in real architectural, political, and cultural life. The book studies utopian visions published in the UK and the USA in the 1800s by writers such Robert Owen, James Silk Buckingham, Edward Bellamy, and William Morris.
Additional text
In his lavishly illustrated Victorian Visions of Suburban Utopia: Abandoning Babylon, Nathaniel Robert Walker reconstructs and analyzes the "ideas, longings, and values that gave rise to the modern suburb" in Britain and the United States ... It thus would have further enhanced the appeal of this fascinating book to learn more about the relationship between the contemporary fictional visions Walker so thoroughly and extensively documents and the already existing suburban landscapes of the nineteenth century.
