Chronotope and Rhythmic Production: Garden Cities, Narratives of Order and Spaces of Hope

Abstract

In George Bernard Shaw’s 1904 play, John Bull’s Other Island, the Irishman Peter Keegan reminds us, ‘Every dream is a prophecy: every jest is an earnest in the womb of Time’ (Shaw 1952 [1904]: 452). Perhaps in the same spirit, a reviewer of the 1910 Garden City Pantomime at Letchworth writes: ‘I refuse to take Garden City seriously, because, like all important things, it began as a joke. An official in the House of Lords wrote a little book about the cities of Tomorrow. A number of influential men took him at his word and floated a company to build castles in the air’ (Buckley 1910: n.p.).