Richard Jefferies, After London; or Wild England

A scholarly edition of a significant and exciting late Victorian science fiction novel, Richard Jefferies' After London is uncanny and intriguing, an adventure story, quest romance, dystopia, and Darwinian novel rolled into one, but also a pioneering work of Victorian science fiction. Imagining a mysterious natural catastrophe that plunges its people into a barbaric future, Jefferies remarkable novel drowns and destroys London and depicts a challenging 'Wild England' dominated by nature and filled with evolved animals and devolved humans. Of its time but also distinctively modern, After London can, in its uneasy expression of Victorian and post-Victorian anxieties about industrial development, urbanisation, natural resources, and climate, be regarded as one of the first novels of the Anthropocene. This new critical edition provides a detailed introduction situating After London in relevant social and political contexts, considering its place in Jefferies' wider canon and its relations to a range of literary genres, and offering a series of readings designed to encourage readers to fully appreciate the novel's productive strangeness. The edition is supported by a Jefferies chronology, further reading list and two supplementary pieces of Jefferies's writings. Book jacket.