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A World of Women

Part of MIT Press / Radium Age

Author J. D. Beresford
Introduction by Astra Taylor
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Paperback
$19.95 US
The MIT Press
On sale Mar 15, 2022 | 340 Pages | 978-0-262-54335-4
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When a plague wipes out most of the world’s male population and civilization crumbles, women struggle to build an agrarian community in the English countryside.

Imagine a plague that brings society to a standstill by killing off most of the men on Earth. The  few men who survive descend into lechery and atavism. Meanwhile, a group of women (accompanied by one virtuous male survivor) leave the wreckage of London to start fresh, establishing a communally run agrarian outpost. But their sexist society hasn’t permitted most of them to learn any useful skills—will the commune survive their first winter? This is the bleak world imagined in 1913 by English writer J. D. Beresford—one that has particular resonance for the planet’s residents in the 2020s. This edition of A World of Women offers twenty-first century readers a new look at a neglected classic.
 
Beresford introduces us to the solidly bourgeois, prim and proper Gosling family. As once-bustling London shuts down—Parliament closes, factories grind to a halt, nature reclaims stone and steel—the paterfamilias Mr. Gosling adopts a life of libertinism while his daughters in the countryside struggle to achieve a radically transformed and improved egalitarian and feminist future.
 
Series Foreword vii
Introduction: Out of the Wreckage xiii
Astra Taylor
Book I The New Plague 1
1 The Gosling Family 3
2 The Opinions of Jasper Thrale 19
3 London's Incredulity 39
4 Mr Barker's Flair 45
5 The Closed Door 53
6 Disaster 65
7 Panic 79
8 Gurney in Cornwall 91
9 The Devolution of George Gosling 99
10 Exodus 121
Book II The March of the Goslings 127
11 The Silent City 129
12 Emigrant 149
13 Differences 169
14 Aunt May 183
15 From Sudbury to Wycombe 193
16 The Young Butcher of High Wycombe 209
Book III Womankind in the Making 223
17 London to Marlow 225
18 Modes of Expression 245
19 On the Flood 277
20 The Terrors of Spring 291
21 Smoke 299
Epilogue: The Great Plan 309
J.D. Beresford (1873–1947) was an English dramatist, journalist, and author. His proto-science fiction novels include The Hampdenshire Wonder (1911), A World of Women (1913), and The Riddle of the Tower (1944, with Esme Wynne-Tyson); he also wrote in the horror and ghost story genres. A great admirer of H.G. Wells, he wrote the first critical study of Wells in 1915. His daughter, Elisabeth Beresford (1926–2010), was creator of the literary and TV franchise The Wombles.
 
Astra Taylor is director of the philosophical documentaries Zizek! (2005), Examined Life (2008), and What Is Democracy? (2018). She is author of the American Book Award winner The People’s Platform (2014) and Democracy May Not Exist, But We’ll Miss It When It’s Gone (2019), and coauthor of Can’t Pay, Won’t Pay: The Case for Economic Disobedience and Debt Abolition (2020). Her latest book is Remake the World: Essays, Reflections, Rebellions (2021).
J. D. Beresford View titles by J. D. Beresford

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When a plague wipes out most of the world’s male population and civilization crumbles, women struggle to build an agrarian community in the English countryside.

Imagine a plague that brings society to a standstill by killing off most of the men on Earth. The  few men who survive descend into lechery and atavism. Meanwhile, a group of women (accompanied by one virtuous male survivor) leave the wreckage of London to start fresh, establishing a communally run agrarian outpost. But their sexist society hasn’t permitted most of them to learn any useful skills—will the commune survive their first winter? This is the bleak world imagined in 1913 by English writer J. D. Beresford—one that has particular resonance for the planet’s residents in the 2020s. This edition of A World of Women offers twenty-first century readers a new look at a neglected classic.
 
Beresford introduces us to the solidly bourgeois, prim and proper Gosling family. As once-bustling London shuts down—Parliament closes, factories grind to a halt, nature reclaims stone and steel—the paterfamilias Mr. Gosling adopts a life of libertinism while his daughters in the countryside struggle to achieve a radically transformed and improved egalitarian and feminist future.
 

Table of Contents

Series Foreword vii
Introduction: Out of the Wreckage xiii
Astra Taylor
Book I The New Plague 1
1 The Gosling Family 3
2 The Opinions of Jasper Thrale 19
3 London's Incredulity 39
4 Mr Barker's Flair 45
5 The Closed Door 53
6 Disaster 65
7 Panic 79
8 Gurney in Cornwall 91
9 The Devolution of George Gosling 99
10 Exodus 121
Book II The March of the Goslings 127
11 The Silent City 129
12 Emigrant 149
13 Differences 169
14 Aunt May 183
15 From Sudbury to Wycombe 193
16 The Young Butcher of High Wycombe 209
Book III Womankind in the Making 223
17 London to Marlow 225
18 Modes of Expression 245
19 On the Flood 277
20 The Terrors of Spring 291
21 Smoke 299
Epilogue: The Great Plan 309

Author

J.D. Beresford (1873–1947) was an English dramatist, journalist, and author. His proto-science fiction novels include The Hampdenshire Wonder (1911), A World of Women (1913), and The Riddle of the Tower (1944, with Esme Wynne-Tyson); he also wrote in the horror and ghost story genres. A great admirer of H.G. Wells, he wrote the first critical study of Wells in 1915. His daughter, Elisabeth Beresford (1926–2010), was creator of the literary and TV franchise The Wombles.
 
Astra Taylor is director of the philosophical documentaries Zizek! (2005), Examined Life (2008), and What Is Democracy? (2018). She is author of the American Book Award winner The People’s Platform (2014) and Democracy May Not Exist, But We’ll Miss It When It’s Gone (2019), and coauthor of Can’t Pay, Won’t Pay: The Case for Economic Disobedience and Debt Abolition (2020). Her latest book is Remake the World: Essays, Reflections, Rebellions (2021).
J. D. Beresford View titles by J. D. Beresford

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