SOURCE: “‘The Journey from Fantasy to Politics’: The Representation of Socialism and Feminism in Gloriana and The Image-Breakers,” in Rediscovering Forgotten Radicals: British Women Writers, 1889-1939, edited by Angela Ingram and Daphne Patai, The University of North Carolina Press, 1993, pp. 43-56.

In the following essay, Ardis evaluates the relationship between turn-of-the-century British feminism and socialism by examining the novels of Lady Florence Dixie and Gertrude Dix.

In British Socialists: The Journey from Fantasy to Politics, Stanley Pierson describes the transformation of British socialism between 1880 and 1910 as a journey from the glorious utopian fantasies of New Life promoted by William Morris, Edward Carpenter, and Havelock Ellis to the realpolitik of early-twentieth-century Independent Labour Party (ILP) activists and Fabian socialists. The loss of a certain quality of “vision and commitment,” Pierson argues, attended British socialists' acquisition of parliamentary power, and his study traces the internal disagreements, defections, and schisms within...