49 pages • 1 hour read
William MorrisNews from Nowhere
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1890A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 1-8Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary: “Discussion and Bed”
A man identified only as “our friend” attends a lively conversation about what the post-Revolutionary world will look like and returns home wishing, “If I could but see it!” (7). As he arrives home, the weather changes, and his unease about the debate gives way to a feeling of well-being. A night of fitful sleep leads him to “surprising adventures” that will, he believes, be best told in the first person.
Chapter 2 Summary: “A Morning Bath”
The now-first-person narrator exits his home in the Hammersmith district of London and discovers a different world than that of the night before. The weather is unusually sunny and warm, and the River Thames is stunningly clear, free of industrial pollution. He gets in a boat with a man dressed in clothing more appropriate for a medieval waterman than a 19th-century one. The narrator looks around him in wonder, noticing the cleanliness of the riverbanks and the beauty of the buildings. A bridge unlike anything he has ever seen catches his eye. The waterman says that it was built in 2003, alerting the narrator to the fact that he has entered the future. When the narrator gets out of the boat, he politely tries to pay the man for his services, but the man seems confused. He says he has heard of this custom to give something for a service, but to him it seems unnecessary and roundabout, as his work taking people on the boat is something that he would do for anyone. Realizing that the narrator must be a stranger, the boatman offers to act as a tour guide and introduce him to another friend, who is also staying at the guesthouse.
Chapter 3 Summary: “The Guest House and Breakfast Therein”
The narrator and the boatman, Richard “Dick” Hammond, sit down with Dick’s friend, a weaver named Bob, and some women. In the hall, the narrator notices an inscription commemorating the Hammersmith Socialists—and dated May 1962. Bob asks the narrator about his age and background, but Dick checks Bob’s manners. The narrator responds that they can call him by his family name, Guest, and add his first name, William, if they want. He tells them that he is 56 years old. Everyone laughs and says he looks older than that. They urge him to guess one of the women’s ages. He guesses that she is 20, but she is 42.
Guest asks Bob about his work as a weaver, but Bob says he barely weaves. He also does printing, composing, mathematics, writing, and more. When a tall, handsome man named Boffin tries to ask Guest more questions, Dick intervenes and says he is bringing Guest to his grandfather in Bloomsbury so that he—Guest—can ask questions instead.
When Guest comments that Boffin shares his name with a character from a Dickens novel (Our Mutual Friend), Dick responds that it is a joke. Like Dickens’s Boffin, he works as a dustman—essentially, a garbage collector—but enjoys dressing luxuriously. Dick mentions that Boffin also loves writing reactionary novels filled with “local colour,” itself a sly reference to Dickens on Morris’s part. Dick and Guest depart in a carriage that is, Guest notes, much more comfortable and less vulgar than those he is used to.
Chapter 4 Summary: “A Market by the Way”
Guest observes the architecture and fashion of the 21st century as he and Dick ride through the fields of outer London. He judges the people he sees as much more handsome than typical peasants. The beauty of the people, their clothing, and the surrounding buildings inspire Guest.
Dick tells Guest they have arrived at Hammersmith market and blushes as he says that he helped construct the theater Guest praises. Guest, noticing a woman in a light green dress, tells Dick that the people there are beautiful, unlike the country people he is used to. Dick is confused by this statement, noting only that the people in the market are their “neighbours” and that people living elsewhere in England tend to appear more rugged. Guest clarifies that he means that he hasn’t seen any poor people. Dick is again perplexed, thinking that Guest must mean sick people. Though Guest attempts to explain further, Dick still does not grasp his meaning but says that perhaps his grandfather will.
Chapter 5 Summary: “Children on the Road”
As they travel through Kensington, now the site of a luxuriant forest, Guest notices an unusual number of children of all ages who appear to be living in tents. Dick explains that the adults encourage the children to come to the forest in the summertime to learn about the wilderness. He says some adults also come to live there for the summer in order to find “rough” work that is no longer part of daily life. Trying to make small talk without revealing his lack of understanding, Guest comments about the children going back to school at the end of the summer—once again leading to confusion, as Dick is unfamiliar with the term when applied to children. Guest defines what he means by “school”—a system of education where adults teach children—and Dick asks why children do not teach adults. These children, he says, are learning all kinds of things, like swimming, cooking, and carpentry. Guest explains that he is talking about their minds, and Dick replies that all of those skills require their mind. If he means reading, children learn by age four by seeing all the books lying around. They learn to write, but not too early such that their writing is ugly, and they learn various languages (French, German, English, Irish, Welsh, Latin) from their elders, neighbors, and foreign visitors. They learn history by reading books, but many people have no interest because interest in history is sparked “in periods of turmoil and strife and confusion” (37). Instead, people learn how to make things and why things happen, but everyone can pursue their own inclinations. In general, though, Dick concludes, children imitate their elders, and therefore they are drawn to work they can see like gardening and building.
As they get closer to central London, Guest identifies a crumbling Westminster Abbey and then the Houses of Parliament. Dick bursts out laughing when Guest asks if the Parliament buildings are still in use: They are warehouses for manure. Dick says, however, that he is glad they still exist as a contrast to newer, more beautiful buildings.
Chapter 6 Summary: “A Little Shopping”
Upon arriving in Piccadilly, Dick and Guest go shopping for a pipe and tobacco. The store they choose is manned by a 12-year-old boy and his slightly older sister. They replace Guest’s own bag with one that is bigger and of better quality and insist on giving him an ornate pipe. When he tries to refuse, worried that he will lose it, the girl responds that if he loses it, someone else will find and enjoy it and he will get another one. Guest causes a moment of awkwardness when he asks how to pay for these goods—no one understands him, but they are too polite to correct him—and he offers words of thanks instead. When they return to the carriage, the woman they had tasked with watching it has left, and in her place is an old man who asks to ride with them.
Chapter 7 Summary: “Trafalgar Square”
From Piccadilly, the carriage moves toward an open space surrounded by ugly buildings and dotted with ugly sculptures; Guest immediately recognizes it as Trafalgar Square. The new passenger, the old man, mentions reading about an event that took place there in 1887, that is, within Guest’s memory. In the old man’s telling, the forces of a “barbarous” government exercised violence against its own citizens, something he finds almost too ridiculous to believe. When Guest affirms the story, both Dick and the old man are incredulous; Guest can only say, “We had to put up with it” (51). His companions accuse him of reading the wrong history books and struggle to understand how men could commit such atrocities or be happy while others were in prison nearby. When Guest asks if they have prisons, Dick is shocked at the very idea. Guest realizes that he must be careful about trying to give too many alternative explanations, as they risk revealing his status as a time traveler.
Guest inquires how, in a place as practical as this, people have the time and interest to create such elaborate toys like the pipe. Dick explains that nearly everyone knows how to carve, and since work is getting scarce, people encourage petty tasks like that. They observe what Guest understands to be a factory but Dick what calls a “Banded-workshop,” where people can work together if they choose. Another group of men works happily on the road, with wine and women nearby.
Chapter 8 Summary: “An Old Friend”
After the old man leaves their carriage, Guest asks Dick the old man’s age, and he responds that he is around 90. Guest is shocked at how old but capable the man is. Then they see the British Museum, and Dick says they should go to the Museum Market to let the horse rest and because he needs to speak to someone. Guest notes that Dick seems to be stalling his entry, so he hurries him along so that they can get to his great-grandfather.
Chapters 1-8 Analysis
The first several chapters introduce the narrator and almost immediately transport him from 1890 to the 21st century. Morris frames the journey as wish fulfilment. Although he is already a socialist, the protagonist is frustrated that he cannot entirely imagine what a transformed society would look like; he essentially wills this world into existence. Morris omits any explanation for how Guest ends up more than a century in the future; whatever revolution occurred remains concealed. Morris shows himself less interested in the mechanics of time travel than what it can teach about the present and future. By not dwelling on how the change takes place, Morris focuses more fully on an explanation of the new world in which his protagonist finds himself. Moreover, the technological and scientific landscape of 21st-century London is substantially the same as that of the 19th century—and is in certain ways less advanced than London in 1890. Guest is able to identify landmarks in Hammersmith and on his way into central London; their use has changed, but their appearance remains familiar. All of this lays the groundwork for one of the novel’s major themes: The Familiar Made Strange. By keeping much of London’s appearance and technology familiar, Morris can more fully highlight the important political, economic, and social changes that have created this utopian world. Along with the shift to first-person narration at the end of Chapter 1, the persistence of familiar landmarks in a future world eases the imaginative leap from present to future.
The sense of the familiar made strange pervades Guest’s first impressions of the 21st century, even before he knows where or, more accurately, when he is. The house still stands, and he does not doubt that the river he sees is the Thames, even though it is much more beautiful and less polluted than he remembers. An impressive bridge stands where a plainer, uglier one had been. As Guest tries to make sense of this, he says, “I had perhaps dreamed of such a bridge, but never seen such an one [sic]” (12). He likens it to the Ponte Vecchio in Florence, noting that it is “splendidly solid” but also elegant. It is, significantly, not futuristic; if anything, the stone construction and presence of small structures on it evokes the landscape of pre-19th-century London. Yet Dick’s casual remark that it had been opened in 2003 immediately alerts Guest that he is in the future, rather than the past.
Guest is further impressed by the youthful appearance and relaxed, friendly demeanor of the people he encounters. At breakfast, he learns that a woman he guesses is 20 years old is actually 42, and as he and Dick ride through London, he notes that almost everyone is joyous and no one is poor—the word “poor” doesn’t even exist in Dick’s vocabulary. Although Dick does not possess the same depth of learning as his great-grandfather, the simple answers he gives to Guest’s questions and even his expressions of confusion hint at the central theme of Pleasure Without Property. Freed from the grinding conditions of the “World-Market,” the enforced austerity of capitalism, and the oppression of the ruling classes, 21st-century Londoners seem to Guest to move from one joy to another, and even work becomes pleasant. In this society, Guest need not even worry about losing a particularly ornate pipe. The girl who gives it to him makes this clear: “What will it matter if you do? Somebody is sure to find it, and he will use it, and you can get another” (45). Since the object does not “belong” to Guest in the way he is used to, there can be no substantial loss if it enters someone else’s possession.
As Guest tries to understand the new world without accidentally revealing where he comes from, the contrast between the two worlds becomes increasingly stark, intensifying the sense of the familiar made strange. When Guest asks whether they use the Parliament buildings, Dick “[bursts] out laughing” and explains that they are used as “a storage place for manure” and “as a foil for the beautiful ones we build now” (39-40). The exchange highlights one of Morris’s central satirical techniques. While Dick’s reference to manure is to him merely factual, the linking of Parliament to animal excrement is a sly, if vulgar, commentary on 19th-century politics—the manure, that is, has always been in the building.
Public happiness in the 21st century appears as a function of having embraced the idea of pleasure without property and, at the same time, of having let go of ideas about scarcity. This lack of fear is vital to the public’s happiness. When discussing the fact that the old buildings take up space, Dick says, “[W]e can always build elsewhere” (40). There is no fear that they will run out—of space, of work, of materials, or of money. Whereas Guest feels a near-constant anxiety about paying for things and nervously anticipates the moment when all the negative dimensions of this society will be revealed, the people he meets have an almost childlike freedom from these fears. Rather, they are oriented toward a natural world that remains abundant and inviting—so safe, in fact, that children can spend their entire summer camping in the forest. Thus, Guest’s fears prove to be a function of his own industrialized age. By contrast, the London of the novel represents the possibility of The Return to Nature After Industrialization. When everything is shared, there is always more. Rather than hoarding goods out of fear that they will run out, they view the generosity of each person as given.
