News from Nowhere was first published ias a serial in the journal of the Socialist League, Commonweal, between January and October 1890. Later in the same year the serial was reprinted as a book, without authorisation by Morris, by the American publishers, Roberts Brothers.
In 1891 Morris himself revised the text which was then published by Reeves and Turner; this edition went though many reprintings without any further changes, and was later taken on by Longmans. The text in MIA is taken from the Longmans 1908 reprint.
In 1892 Morris's own Kelmscott Press produced a luxurious edition with decorative capitals and the addition of a frontispiece showing the 'Old Grey House', but with text unchanged.
The book was soon translated into other languages. The first was Dutch: an incomplete translation of the Commonweal version, Nieuwstijdingen van Uit Nergensland of Een Tijdperk van Rust by Frank van der Goes appeared in the paper of the Sociaal-Democratische Bond, Recht vor Allen in 1891. Van der Goes went on to publish a full translation in book form in 1897. The next translation was German, again published as a serial in Der Neue Zeit starting in May 1892 and ending in February 1893. The translation, part by Clara Steinitz and part by Natalie Liebknecht, was made from Morris's final version of the text though skipping chapter 29. It too was later published in book form, with a short biography of Morris and introduction both by Wilhelm Liebknecht, with some of the shorter chapters reorganized as subsections, thus changing the chapter numbering. The book also included new illustrations by Hans Gabriel Jentzsch. The illustrations were reused in the 1907 Bulgarian translation of Nowhere, as well as a further American serialization (this time of the final version) published in The Comrade magazine between November 1901 and May 1903.
It is a book that is often ignored by Marxists and others who denounce it as backward looking and it is indeed true that Morris' utopian vision is that of a society which has in some sense reverted to an agricultural and handicraft one and seems static. But activists among our readers will be astonished as the insight of this middle aged and middle class English poet and artist in chapter 17 or How The Change Came. Morris here foresees the process of a working class revolution which includes a period of Dual Power, the creation of a fascist movement when the ruling class is threatened, the key role of the media (newspapers only in his case) and the overthrow of the original working class leadership by a more vigorous and determined one together with the necessity of a decentralised but coherent political leadership. Looking at the far cruder concepts of revolution by other socialists who were his contemporaries it is a startling feat.
Few socialists are rash enough to attempt any precision about their desired future state but even his romantic view of rural toil and what we might consider primitive technology contains an attempt to get to grips with and provide an answer to the whole question of alienated labour which again, though little considered at the time, has resurfaced as an important component of Marx's thought. I think he is far too dismissive of science and technology since he sees science and mathematics, like art, as gentlemanly pastimes - though in his utopia of course anyone can participate in them. Otherwise he suggests that science was becoming a commodity, in his words "an appendage to the commercial system". He does not see it as an immensely powerful collective enterprise and the only means by which his population will be able to be as healthy and long-lived as they are. Other questionable aspects of his future society with which he attempts to grapple, including education or economic organisation will doubtless occur to readers as they study this work.
But, whatever the criticisms that we are able to make after another century of human experience, this text forces socialists to try to answer deep and important questions. And they should so study it.
Introduction by Ted Crawford, 4th November 2000
The text of News from Nowhere was checked and corrected by Ted Crawford and turned into XHTML by Chris Croome for the William Morris Internet Archive, a subarchive of the Marxists Internet Archive, on 4th November 2000. Further proof-reading was done in 2023-4 by Zdravko Saveski, who also provided the illustrations by Jentzsch. Bibliographic infromation and the Commonweal version provided by Graham Seaman.