The British Barbarians
1895
The British Barbarians, published in 1895 by Grant Allen, is a science fiction novel set in Victorian England. It follows Philip Christy, a clerk who encounters Bertram Ingledew, an 'Alien' unfamiliar with English customs. The narrative critiques societal norms and taboos, contrasting urban decadence with the purity of nature. Allen's work is notable for its exploration of morality and social conventions through the lens of an outsider's perspective.
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“I beg your pardon," Philip interposed stiffly, now put upon his mettle. "We have no taboos at all in England. ... England, you must remember, is a civilized country, and taboos are institutions that belong the lowest and most degraded savages.””
— Grant Allen
“In fact, in this modern England of ours, this fatherland of snobdom, one passes one's life in a see-saw of doubt, between the Scylla and Charybdis of those two antithetical social dangers: You are always afraid you may get to know somebody you yourself do not want to know, or may try to know somebody who does not want to know you.””
— Grant Allen
“If there is an injustice or a barbarity possible, I might have been sure the law of England would make haste to perpetrate it.””
— Grant Allen
“A bullet would perhaps be an unnecessarily severe form of punishment to mete out; but I confess I could excuse the man who was so far carried away by his righteous indignation as to duck the fellow in the nearest horse-pond.””
— Grant Allen
“Professional considerations made the Dean refrain from endorsing this open expression of murderous sentiment in its fullest form; a clergyman ought always to keep up some decent semblance of respect for the Gospel and the Ten Commandments -- or, at least, the greater part of them.””
— Grant Allen
“Now, nothing annoys an angry savage or an uneducated person so much as the perfect coolness of a civilized and cultivated man when he himself is boiling with indignation. He feels its superiority an affront to his barbarianism.””
— Grant Allen
“Philip owned a looking-glass, and was therefore accustomed to a very high standard of manly beauty.””
— Grant Allen
“It is almost impossible to get a novel printed in an English journal unless it is warranted to contain nothing at all to which anybody, however narrow, could possibly object, on any ground whatever, religious, political, social, moral or aesthetic. The romance that appeals to your average editor must say or hint at nothing at all which is not universally believed and received by everybody, everywhere in this realm of Britain.””
— Grant Allen
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Allen, Grant. The British Barbarians. Lex, lex-books.com/book/the-british-barbarians-ee3a0417-2eb5-4235-8526-1d0078aeb9ff.Allen, G. (1895). The British Barbarians. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/the-british-barbarians-ee3a0417-2eb5-4235-8526-1d0078aeb9ffAllen, Grant. The British Barbarians. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/the-british-barbarians-ee3a0417-2eb5-4235-8526-1d0078aeb9ff.
