Storm Jameson's 1936 novel, In the Second Year, is the earlier of her two anti-fascist dystopias (the second being Then We Shall Hear Singing, 1942.) It fantasies a near-future Britain under the second year of the reign of a fascist dictatorship. Jameson relies upon several of the tropes of the utopian/dystopian genre, chiefly in her use of a visitor narrator who observes the fantasy culture as an outsider. Assuming that the narrator's experience of England ended in the mid-1930s as known to the reader, this tactic simultaneously bridges the distance, and asserts the similarities, between the familiar 1930s present and the unfamiliar, imagined 1940s future.
Jameson's visitor/observer is Andy Hillier, an academic expatriate who was abroad in Norway during the period of the fascist revolution. He returns to Britain in order to witness...
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Citation: Sponenberg, Ashlie. "In the Second Year". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 19 June 2003 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=9426, accessed 05 December 2025.]
