Author Description

After London (1885) is an extraordinary novel in which Jefferies makes his voyage, through fantasy, away from the corruption and determinism of his age. London has suffocated in noxious filth, and its people relapse into barbarism; Felix (an older Bevis of Jefferies' earlier children's novel) escapes across the lake which has formed over the south of England. Although the centre of social and economic evil has collapsed, the fragmented rural poverty which ensures is no better.John Fowles, in his introduction to this edition, links After London with Butler's Erewhon and Morris's News From Nowhere, and concludes that Jefferies' novel is 'profounder in its implications'. Q. D. Leavis admire its 'instinctive humanity and indignant expression'; Edward Thomas described it as 'a pastoral fluting with grave undertones'; and William Morris commented, 'absurd hopes curled around my heart as I read it'.