UCLA

“Precautionary Tales: Political Consequence in British Fiction, 1867–1903” examines a selection of narratives that helped shape the mood of political apprehension that emerged during Britain’s period of Liberal democratic reform. The second half of the nineteenth century witnessed several significant political events, which included the extension of the franchise to a majority of working-class men through the Second and Third Reform Acts (1867 and 1884, respectively), the institution of anonymous voting by ballot (1872), mass demonstrations against unemployment that were countered by violent police suppression (1885, 1886, and 1887), legislation that enabled individuals to conscientiously object to vaccination for themselves and their children for the first time in England’s history (1898), and the start of a small but vocal anti-war movement that arose partly in response to the conduct of Cecil Rhodes in South Africa in the period leading up to the Second Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902). Novelists responded to these events by speculatively imagining the new political landscapes that might emerge as a result. Their narratives move beyond the mere anticipation of crises to come, actively urging their readers toward specific preparatory and preventive undertakings in an effort to call more secure futures into being. At the same time, they help us understand the essential narrative function of precaution itself.