The Great Romance - Literary Connections

Literary Connections

In The Great Romance, the protagonist endures a long sleep and awakes in the future. He meets and falls in love with a young woman named Edith, a descendant of an important figure in his earlier life, who then serves as a guide for the protagonist in the new world he confronts. These elements unite The Great Romance with Bellamy's famous book. A third novel of the period, John Macnie's The Diothas, may have served as a conduit for the common features shared by the Inhabitant's and Bellamy's fictions; all three share these commonalities, and Macnie's book has a New Zealand connection that Bellamy's lacks. Yet it is also possible that Bellamy drew upon The Great Romance directly rather than through any intermediary work: editor Dominic Alessio has argued that Bellamy's later short story "To Whom This May Come" shows a "pervasive" influence of the Inhabitant's work on the shared theme of telepathic communication.