RSVP-VPFA Online Study Day

Call for Papers

The socialist movement emerged in Victorian Britain during the 1880s with the foundation of the Democratic Federation (later the Social Democratic Federation) in 1881, the Fabian Society in 1884, and the Socialist League in 1885. Alongside the political developments ran a rich seam of socialist fiction, both novel length and short form.  Like the Chartists before them, socialists used fiction as a vehicle for political discourse, shaping it for a popular audience. The majority of it was published within periodicals, never reaching book form.

Michael Rosen (2018) has argued that, “In Britain, the ideas of socialism embodied many strands of intertwined thought and activity, owing their thought to very different – sometimes contradictory – traditions.” The fiction which emerged during this period reflected those often-conflicting ideologies and factions.  It was presented in a multiplicity of genres, including science fiction, fairy tales, fables, moral tales, realist novels, humourous stories, mystery stories, romances and utopias.

Many authors of such texts are familiar to us – George Bernard Shaw, Edith Nesbit, William Morris, H.G. Wells, Edward Carpenter, Margaret Harkness – while others have remained more obscure and less known, although popular in their own time.  Socialism was an international movement and many European, North American and Australian socialist novels enjoyed widespread English distribution and recognition, with influences running in both directions. Socialist periodicals were consumed by individual readers but also communally: in reading groups; lectures and meetings; informal “worker’s libraries” and reading rooms; and read aloud during services in the Labour Church.  The use of fiction as part of collective activity is another research area that demands further exploration.

Suggested Topics for Proposals

RSVP and VPFA invite proposals for a joint study day on topics including but not limited to:

• Genre and socialist fiction, whether prose or poetry (i.e., epic, utopia, fable)
• Periodical publication and / or serialisation; the socialist periodical as a home for fiction
• Education versus entertainment in the socialist periodical
• Modes of reception
• Trans-Atlantic, Trans-European, and / or Imperial Socialist fiction
• Regional and / or dialect socialist fiction
• Religion and socialist fiction
• Gender in socialist fiction
• Relationship between socialist fiction and other movements and campaigns – eugenics, pacifism, social purity, temperance, pastoralism, feminism, sexual liberation, anticolonialism, anarchism, the cooperative and guild movements, etc.
• Individual writers, editors, proprietors, and / or texts
• Disagreements and splits within the socialist movement and the role of the periodical press