Full Description
As George Orwell wrote in 1940, "Everyone who has ever read When the Sleeper Wakes remembers it." Graham, the "sleeper" of the title, falls into a cataleptic trance in 1897. Graham will survive on life support for 203 years, suddenly waking in 2100. He wakes to a London encased in a glass dome, in which the Victorian class system has hardened into castes and a revolution is brewing. An important influence on later dystopian novels, Sleeper is a deeply pessimistic book, although Wells could not resist an ending ambiguous enough to permit the reader a faint gleam of optimism.
The novel was re-written and published in 1908 as The Sleeper Awakes, but this edition preserves the original version. Historical appendices include contemporary reviews, Henri Lanos illustrations from The Graphic, and other utopian fiction from the period.
Contents
Appendix A: Contemporary Reviews
1. Wesleyan-Methodist Magazine (June 1900)
2. Athenæum (3 June 1899)
3. "Prophet vs. Novelist," Academy (10 June 1899)
4. New York Times, 18 August 1899
Appendix B: Two Prefaces and an "Afterword"
1. Preface to the 1910 Edition
2. Preface to the 1921 Edition
3. From Experiment in Autobiography (1934)
Appendix C: Illustrations by Henri Lanos
1. The Graphic, no. 1529 (21 January 1899)
2. The Graphic, no. 1529 (4 February 1899)
3. The Graphic, no. 1529 (25 February 1899)
4. The Graphic, no. 1529 (29 April 1899)
Appendix D: Utopian Quarrels
1. From W.H. Hudson, A Crystal Age (1887)
2. From William Morris, News from Nowhere (1891)
3. From Edward Bellamy, Looking Backward (1889)
Appendix E: Film Versions of When the Sleeper Wakes
