Goslings — now available!
By:
June 7, 2013
Announcement! HiLoBooks’s gorgeous paperback edition of the forgotten, brilliant science fiction novel Goslings, by J.D. Beresford, is now available for sale. Buy your copy now, while supplies last!
“At once a postapocalyptic adventure, a comedy of manners, and a tract on sexual and social equality, Goslings is by turns funny, horrifying, and politically stirring. Most remarkable of all may be that it has not yet been recognized as a classic.” — Benjamin Kunkel (2012 blurb for HiLoBooks)
Serialized here at HiLoBrow.com from September 2012 through May 2013, Goslings was first published 100 years ago.
When a plague kills off most of England’s male population, the proper bourgeois Mr. Gosling abandons his family for a life of lechery. His daughters — who have never been permitted to learn self-reliance — in turn escape London for the countryside, where they find meaningful roles in a female-dominated agricultural commune. That is, until the Goslings’ idyll is threatened by their elders’ prejudices about free love!
J.D. Beresford was an English dramatist, journalist, and author. His science fiction novels include The Hampdenshire Wonder (1911) and The Riddle of the Tower (1944, with Esme Wynne-Tyson). His daughter Elisabeth was author of a series of children’s books about The Wombles.
The HiLoBooks edition of Goslings features an Introduction by Astra Taylor, a writer, political organizer, and director of the documentary films Žižek! and Examined Life.
Contemporary reviews: “A fantastic commentary upon life.” — W.L. George, The Bookman (1914). “The picture of that bevy of English Bacchantes — graceless civilized savages — dragging along a butcher in a triumphal car, cannot be forgotten — it is a piece of the most vivid imaginative realism, as well as a challenge to our vaunted civilization.” — The Living Age (1916).
For more information about HiLoBooks, visit our homepage.
RADIUM AGE SCIENCE FICTION: “Radium Age” is HILOBROW’s name for the 1904–33 era, which saw the discovery of radioactivity, the revelation that matter itself is constantly in movement — a fitting metaphor for the first decades of the 20th century, during which old scientific, religious, political, and social certainties were shattered. This era saw the publication of genre-shattering writing by, e.g.: Algernon Blackwood | Edgar Rice Burroughs | Karel Čapek | Buster Crabbe | August Derleth | Arthur Conan Doyle | Hugo Gernsback | Charlotte Perkins Gilman | Cicely Hamilton | Hermann Hesse | William Hope Hodgson | Aldous Huxley | Inez Haynes Irwin | Alfred Jarry | Jack Kirby (Radium Age sf’s influence on) | Murray Leinster | Gustave Le Rouge | Gaston Leroux | David Lindsay | Jack London | H.P. Lovecraft | A. Merritt | Maureen O’Sullivan | Sax Rohmer | Paul Scheerbart | Upton Sinclair | Clark Ashton Smith | E.E. “Doc” Smith | Olaf Stapledon | John Taine | H.G. Wells | Jack Williamson | Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz | S. Fowler Wright | Philip Gordon Wylie | Yevgeny Zamyatin
MORE RADIUM AGE SF: What is Radium Age science fiction? |Radium Age 100: 100 Best Science Fiction Novels from 1904–33 | Radium Age Supermen | Radium Age Robots | Radium Age Apocalypses | Radium Age Telepaths | Radium Age Eco-Catastrophes | Radium Age Cover Art (1) | SF’s Best Year Ever: 1912 | Radium Age Science Fiction Poetry | Enter Highbrowism | Bathybius! Primordial ooze in Radium Age sf | War and Peace Games (H.G. Wells’s training manuals for supermen)
HILOBOOKS: The mission of HiLoBooks is to serialize novels (both original and reissued) on HiLobrow, and to reissue Radium Age science fiction in beautiful new print editions. The following titles can be read in serial form via HiLobrow.com and/or purchased in gorgeous paperback form: Jack London’s The Scarlet Plague, Rudyard Kipling’s With the Night Mail (and “As Easy as A.B.C.”), Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Poison Belt, H. Rider Haggard’s When the World Shook, Edward Shanks’ The People of the Ruins, William Hope Hodgson’s The Night Land, J.D. Beresford’s Goslings, E.V. Odle’s The Clockwork Man, Cicely Hamilton’s Theodore Savage, and Muriel Jaeger’s The Man with Six Senses.