The Watchdogs of Eden: Chesterton and Buchan Look at the Present of the Future
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Ebenezer Howard’s idea of the garden city represents one of the most influential schemes in social utopianism that developed during the late-Victorian period. Despite the fact that in 1908 the first garden city was eventually established in rural Hertfordshire the literary scene largely ignored its existence and did not take part in the heated debates on the scheme at the time. G.K. Chesterton and John Buchan are among the very few writers who integrate the utopian space of the garden city into their literary worlds. This essay discusses the strategies by which writers of a pointedly conservative stance not only criticise and deconstruct the utopian space of the garden city but also set out to construct conservative counter-utopias.