'Strangely inorganic patriotism' : serializing invasion at the turn of the century

Abstract

Invasion fiction of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was curiously enmeshed in periodical culture. This under-examined absorption of the format into the popular press, where it appeared in serial form, can tell us a great deal about the genre's development, and about the culture of the new journalism at the turn of the century. This article focuses on William Le Queux's and George Griffith's future war narratives that were published in Alfred Harmsworth's and Cyril Arthur Pearson's magazines and newspapers in the 1890s and 1900s, a very different print environment from Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, where George T. Chesney's influential story, "The Battle of Dorking," appeared in 1871. These serial narratives provided alarmist assessment of the nation's readiness for war, confirmed through curated correspondence with readers and underscored by a celebration of technological modernity. The invasion fiction served the expansionist ambitions of their host publications, which aimed to enlist new readers in the name of national interest.