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Wright, Vincent

Entry updated 12 September 2022. Tagged: Author.

(?   -?   ) UK author of whom nothing is known beyond his sf novel, An Ancient Englishman: A D 1599-1906 [for subtitle see Checklist below] (1907), structured as the memoir of Geoffrey Grenville, a sixteenth-century warrior Hero. After battling the Spanish on land and sea, he comes to London, where the Earl of Southampton introduces him to William Shakespeare, to whom he recounts his dramatic life, and who (as we learn in 1906) bases Othello's reminiscences upon this stirring narrative. Grenville then returns home to Kent to find his betrothed dead; to still his pain, her father, a John Dee-like Scientist, puts him into Suspended Animation. Awakened finally in 1906 (see Sleeper Awakes) by a descendant of the scientist, Grenville discovers the Brave New World of twentieth century Britain, which he describes in the sf-tinged language of a visitor to Utopia, noting marvels like electricity, the globe-spanning British Empire (see Imperialism), and trains (see Transportation), the latter described with epiphanic intensity, as is the London Underground (see Underground). Selling his inscribed copy of Romeo and Juliet to support himself, he marries the Reincarnation of his lost beloved, and they set out to explore "the future ..."

Wright's surprisingly atmospheric tale is perhaps most notable for its mixture of modes: in the first half, boys' adventure in the high imperial style of writers like G A Henty (1832-1902); in the second half, utopian discourse in a style popularized by Edward Bellamy. Vincent Wright should not be confused with Ernest Vincent Wright (1872-1939), author of a book-length lipogram, Gadsby (1939), a novel written without using the letter E (see Oulipo). [JC]

Vincent Wright

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