ABSTRACT
In the course of the nineteenth century we witness a flourishing of utopian fiction, not only on the European continent but also in the United Kingdom and North America. It took some time before the horrors of the French Revolution – itself partly motivated by utopian thinking – had receded into the background. Then, half-way through the century, The Communist Manifesto (1848) and Darwin’s On the Origin of Species (1859) offered a worldview with an apparently scientific basis, which aroused hopes and raised the expectation that one day the utopian dream might come true. Intellectuals like Chernyshevsky believed that humankind could evolve to a higher level and that the social and economic obstacles to its development could be overcome by the combined process of historical determinism and political action. Utopianism became a serious thing and turned from a romanticist ideal into a significant factor in the struggle for equality and democracy – and finally, when the first results had been achieved, surprisingly into an invective for castigating political opponents.
