27. Donnelly, Ignatius, 1831-1901.

Caesar's column : a story of the twentieth century / by Edmund Boisgilbert (Ignatius Donnelly). (London : Frederick Warne and Co., 1891)

An example of "future fiction", this dystopian novel is set in 1988. Donnelly wrote partly to present a more realistic view of the twentieth century than that shown by Edward Bellamy in his popular socialist utopia, Looking backward (1888).

Donnelly’s late twentieth-century America is ruled by a plutocratic elite while the masses are brutalized and oppressed. Anarchists bring about a revolution but the country descends into chaos, with the hero escaping to Uganda where he sets up an ideal society in isolation.