Storm Jameson, In the Second Year

Ashlie Sponenberg (University of Massachusetts, Lowell)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.2.1.09: English Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary Britain , 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Kerry Myler (Newman University), Jenni Ramone (The Nottingham Trent University)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1936

Places

England (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Novel

Resources

Storm Jameson's 1936 novel, In the Second Year, is the earlier of her two anti-fascist dystopias (the second being Then We Shall Hear Singing, 1942.) It fantasies a near-future Britain under the second year of the reign of a fascist dictatorship. Jameson relies upon several of the tropes of the utopian/dystopian genre, chiefly in her use of a visitor narrator who observes the fantasy culture as an outsider. Assuming that the narrator's experience of England ended in the mid-1930s as known to the reader, this tactic simultaneously bridges the distance, and asserts the similarities, between the familiar 1930s present and the unfamiliar, imagined 1940s future.

Jameson's visitor/observer is Andy Hillier, an academic …

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1452 words

Citation: Sponenberg, Ashlie. "In the Second Year". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 19 June 2003 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=9426, accessed 26 November 2024.]

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