Lister, Thomas Henry
Entry updated 12 September 2022. Tagged: Author.
(1800-1842) UK civil servant and author, whose first novel, Granby (1826), was the first fully-fledged example of the nonfantastic Silver Fork genre later popularized by Benjamin Disraeli, Edward Bulwer Lytton and others. A Silver Fork ambience permeates his one work of sf interest, "A Dialogue for the Year 2130: Extracted from the Album of a Modern Sibyl" in The Keepsake for MDCCCXXX (anth 1829) edited by Frederic Mansel Reynolds, an Anthology of some importance for early Fantastika, containing as well work by Lord Byron and three stories by Mary Shelley. Lister's Parodic play is an unproduced conversation piece whose participants describe their occupancy of a world almost predictive of H G Wells's The Time Machine (1895), with Eloi-like upper classes gossiping complacently about their Robot servants and the speed of motor-driven Transportation from one resort to another, while Morlock-like lower classes both labour and educate themselves, partly by reading Proto-Sf romances. The United States has broken into warring factions. [JC]
Thomas Henry Lister
born Armitage Park, near Lichfield, Staffordshire: 1800
died London: 5 June 1842
works (highly selected)
- "A Dialogue for the Year 2130: Extracted from the Album of a Modern Sibyl" in The Keepsake for MDCCCXXX (London: Hurst, Chance and Company/London: R Jennings, 1829) edited by Frederic Mansel Reynolds [anth: contains Lister's play, not published elsewhere: hb/nonpictorial]
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