*SOLD*
Ernest Bramah
London, 1907
First edition, first printing of an important early dystopian novel. Very Good in Good, scarce jacket(spine and margins toned, some chipping to ends and corners, a bit of edge wear, short tear at spine foot, 1x2" piece missing from lower corner of front panel, front flap detached). The jacket is rarely seen - only one auction appearance since its publication.
On the science fiction front, the book contains some intriguing visions like flying trains, nationwide wireless telegraphy, and fax machines. Politically…
‘Bramah offers the vision of a left-wing state gone horribly wrong – indeed, he hopes to persuade his readers to sign “the death-warrant of socialist ascendancy in England”. In What Might Have Been, there are only two political parties: Socialists and anti-Socialists, with the Socialists enjoying a firm hold on government. Nationalization is endemic, a minimum wage is introduced, strikes are commonplace, with the workers’ demands always acceded to; meanwhile, the middle and upper classes have been taxed into virtual oblivion, and no longer have any meaningful representation in Parliament. As a review in the Pall Mall Magazine affirmed, the novel portrays “a striking picture of England of 1916, with an imagined Socialist government, sans army, sans navy, sans colonies, sans everything except rates and taxes, which the upper and middle classes pay, and the rest live on”. Eventually, the middle classes rise up and form the “Unity League” in order to wage an economic, capitalist war against the Socialist government. Mass unemployment and extreme hardship follow (although Bramah lays the blame for this at the door of the Socialists), followed by civil war, the demise of the government and democracy itself. Paternalistic capitalism takes over. The captains of industry get on with the business of creating wealth again. England slowly starts to reassert itself on the world stage.
The reactionary thrust of What Might Have Been does not make it devoid of interest. George Orwell, in his essay “Prophecies of Fascism” (1940), could describe the novel as “trivial” as a “political forecast” but “of great interest in the light it casts on the mentality of the struggling middle class”. Orwell viewed Bramah as a “sensitive, idealistic man whose private fear of the mob turned him into a passionate anti-democrat”. This book was almost certainly on Orwell’s mind when he wrote Nineteen Eighty-four.’(Gerri Kimber)
We live in troubled times, my friends - though haven’t we always?