''Three Hundred Years Hence'' is a

utopian A utopia ( ) typically describes an imaginary community or society that possesses highly desirable or nearly perfect qualities for its members. It was coined by Sir Thomas More for his 1516 book ''Utopia'', describing a fictional island society ...

science fiction Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel unive ...

novel by author Mary Griffith, published in 1836. It is the first known

utopian novel Utopian and dystopian fiction are genres of speculative fiction that explore social and political structures. Utopian fiction portrays a setting that agrees with the author's ethos, having various attributes of another reality intended to appeal t ...

written by an American woman. The novel was originally published in 1836 as part of Griffith's collection, ''Camperdown, or News from Our Neighborhood'', and later published by

Prime Press Prime Press, Inc. was a science fiction and fantasy small press specialty publishing house founded in 1947. It published a number of interesting science fiction books in its brief four-year lifespan. It was founded by Oswald Train, James A. Will ...

in 1950 in an edition of 300 copies.

Plot introduction

The novel concerns a hero who falls into a deep sleep and awakens in the Utopian states of Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York.

Influences and successors

Writers of utopian fiction generally need to set their imagined societies either in a remote place (as in Sir Thomas More's original ''

Utopia A utopia ( ) typically describes an imaginary community or society that possesses highly desirable or nearly perfect qualities for its members. It was coined by Sir Thomas More for his 1516 book ''Utopia (book), Utopia'', describing a fictional ...

'' and many imitators), or in a different time. Griffith's story was likely inspired by '' Memoirs of the Year 2500'' by French writer Louis-Sébastien Mercier. Griffith was however the earliest American writer to project her protagonist into the future to encounter a vastly improved social order. Many successors would follow her example; most famously, Edward Bellamy used the same trick in his '' Looking Backward'' (1888), as did many of the writers who produced sequels and responses to his work. The same tactic is exploited in John Macnie's '' The Diothas'' (1883),

W. H. Hudson William Henry Hudson (4 August 1841 – 18 August 1922) – known in Argentina as Guillermo Enrique Hudson – was an English Argentines, Anglo-Argentine author, natural history, naturalist and ornithology, ornithologist. Life Hudson was the ...

's ''

A Crystal Age ''A Crystal Age'' is a utopian novel/Dystopia written by W. H. Hudson, first published in 1887. The book has been called a "significant S-F milestone" and has been noted for its anticipation of the "modern ecological mysticism" that would evolv ...

'' (1887), Elizabeth Corbett's '' New Amazonia'' (1889), Bradford Peck's ''

The World a Department Store ''The World a Department Store: A Story of Life Under a Coöperative System'' is a utopian novel written by Bradford C. Peck, and published by him in 1900. The book was one entrant in the wave of utopian and dystopian writing that occurred in th ...

'' (1900), Charlotte Perkins Gilman's '' Moving the Mountain'' (1911), and other works. Another, later book, published in 1881 by

William Delisle Hay William Delisle Hay (born ca. 1853, County Durham) was a nineteenth-century British author and Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. He was best known for his mycological studies, writings on New Zealand, and a number of science fictional pulp ...

, was given the same title (''Three Hundred Years Hence or A Voice From Posterity''), probably in ignorance of Griffith's earlier but then-obscure work.

Critical reception

Reviewing the 1950 edition, Boucher and McComas characterized the novel as "an odd and delightful item of 1836 dealing with a strongly feminist future."."Recommended Reading," ''

F&SF ''The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction'' (usually referred to as ''F&SF'') is a U.S. fantasy fiction magazine, fantasy and science fiction magazine first published in 1949 by Mystery House, a subsidiary of Lawrence E. Spivak, Lawrence Spiva ...

'', December 1950, p.104

Publication history

*1836, US, Carey, Lea & Blanchard , Pub date 1836, Hardback, included in ''Camperdown, or News from Our Neighborhood'' *1950, US,

, Pub date 1950, Hardback, first separate publication *1975, US,

Gregg Press Gregg Press was founded about 1965 by Charles Gregg in Upper Saddle River, New Jersey to distribute in the United States the antiquarian reprints published in the UK by Gregg Press International. Gregg decided he wanted to publish scholarly repri ...

, Pub date 1975, Hardback

Plot introduction

Influences and successors

Critical reception

Publication history

Notes

Further reading