Three classic utopian novels—now collectibles

More than 100 years ago, three thinkers imagined what a utopian future might look like in the year 2000. Now, their novels are available as a collectible set.

By the late 1800s, Karl Marx's Manifesto had finally entered the mainstream. His ideas for a new world order free from the perils of capitalism sparked a wave of utopian thinkers who used his concepts to write novels set in a more beautiful future.

Looking Backward by Edward Bellamy (1888)

Edward Bellamy's 1888 novel Looking Backward was the first, imagining a technologically advanced Boston with Amazon-like delivery services, Spotify-like access to music, and credit-card-like access to money. His protagonist Julian West is put into a trance only to awake in the year 2000 and find the techno-futurist world of his dreams! Bellamy's book was an instant bestseller, selling over a million copies in its first decade and sparking socialist clubs across the US.

Looking Backward by Edward Bellamy (1888)

News from Nowhere by William Morris (1890)

Across the pond, the London textile designer William Morris didn't care for Bellamy's book. A friend of Marx’ daughter, and a social club founder himself, he preferred a tranquil future with medieval architecture and a world of Etsy-like artisans creating handcrafted goods. He thought industrialization would make the world worse, not better, and he imagined a pastoral paradise where work and education were pursued out of curiosity and leisure, and handcrafting the pursued ideal. His 1890 book News from Nowhere was in direct response to Bellamy's, with his protagonist William Guest waking up shortly after the year 2000.

News from Nowhere by William Morris (1890)

Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1915)

If Bellamy and Morris both imagined a socialist future, Charlotte Perkins Gilman thought it might be better achieved without men. A mentee of Bellamy and a friend of Morris’ daughter, the author of Women & Economics fought for a better division of labor within their economic systems. Her 1915 Herland imagined a society of women who live in pink chateaus in a biodynamic forest filled with fresh fruit and a tranquil people. There is no ego, and thus no competition necessary for their society. They act as a community working in the best interest of their children and the beautiful world they created for them.

Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1915)

Purchase the collectible set!

For the first time, I'm printing all three books as a collectible set. With an introduction and creative direction by myself and design by Shadna Aum, these softcover books are 5 by 7 inches in size, with gold foil dots marking the first, second, and third volumes while incorporating iconography symbolic of each novel's theme.

The interiors are laid out in a minimalist design with drop-cap letters that turn those dots into orbits around the sun. For Looking Backward we have Sputnik and the Earth orbiting the sun to represent technology. For News from Nowhere we have the Earth, Moon, and Sun in their natural orbit, representing nature. For Herland we have the moon in focus as it passes through its waxing and waning phases, representing the feminine.

This collection of utopian thought is available for purchase through

Metalabel

, a new creator platform from the founder of Kickstarter

Yancey Strickler

. I’m excited to debut this project as the first for a new collaborative label I’m launching on the platform and I could not be more thrilled to have this set of some of my favorite thinkers on my shelves.

By looking at what thinkers one hundred years ago hoped today might look like, we can see a vision for utopia that, in many ways, has been realized, and in many others can keep us dreaming of the next hundred years.

Let’s continue dreaming.

Thank you for reading and thinking with me,

Elle Griffin