‘Revolution, Revolution is the one correct solution’

Abstract

Not many novels or plays with a revolutionary theme have been influential in Britain. Revolutionary experiences have been hard to come by and where writers have used their powers of imagination to recreate from history they have tended, like Dickens in A Tale of Two Cities, to use a revolution as a background for adventure and romance. But revolution as a theme is quite uncommon. In this chapter we shall be dealing in the main with William Morris and George Orwell, and to a lesser extent with Jack London and Arthur Koestler. One distinction needs to be drawn before we continue: that between the revolution itself and the period following, which, for convenience, we shall call the post-revolution, when the revolutionary government, having achieved power, seeks to establish itself firmly and permanently and to begin to implement the policies based upon the objectives of the revolution. The first two sections of this chapter will deal with revolution, then, and the third with post-revolution.