The Triumph of Human Empire: Verne, Morris, and Stevenson at the End of the World

Rosalind Williams uses Sir Francis Bacon's early 1600s fictional work New Atlantis—which imagined an undiscovered island inhabited by descendants of the lost realm of Atlantis—as a starting point to examine the rise and triumph of human empire. Bacon's island represented not territorial control but the expansion of human knowledge and power to achieve world domination. Williams explores this historical development through the lives and works of three late nineteenth-century writers: Jules Verne, William Morris, and Robert Louis Stevenson. As the century ended, these writers expressed concern about the direction of their world and feared that organized humanity would misuse knowledge and power. Each pursued a lifelong effort to understand human empire, transcend it, and find a place within it. Williams demonstrates how all three writers used water—both in their lives and their art—as a means of escape from human domination. Additionally, each experimented with the literary boundary between realism and romance, using fantasy and romantic traditions to articulate their evolving understanding of the need for a transformed relationship between humans and Earth.