News From Nowhere characters

Appears from the start

A nineteenth-century Londoner active in the socialist movement. After a dispiriting political meeting, he falls asleep at home and wakes in a transformed England whose people treat private wealth, wage labor, and centralized government as distant history. His questions provide the frame for exploring the new society.

First appears in chapter 2

A friendly boatman whom Guest meets beside the Thames. He accepts Guest's confusion without suspicion, guides him through the changed London, and takes pleasure in skilled work, attractive objects, and the company of others. He belongs to the large Hammond family and becomes Guest's principal companion.

First appears in chapter 3

A young woman helping at the communal guest house where Dick takes Guest for breakfast. She is direct and self-possessed, and her unforced hospitality helps Guest understand that service in this society is voluntary and sociable rather than servile.

Also known as Henry Johnson

First appears in chapter 3

An energetic worker and enthusiastic student of the violent, unequal past. His friends call him Boffin because of his antiquarian interests. He is fascinated by Guest's apparent knowledge of nineteenth-century habits without realizing that Guest comes from that age.

Also known as Old Hammond

First appears in chapter 8

Dick's elderly relative, a historian living in Bloomsbury. Unlike most people around him, he has studied the old commercial civilization closely. He answers Guest's questions about property, law, education, family life, and the long social conflict that produced the present commonwealth.

First appears in chapter 15

An elderly craftsman who remembers the last period in which large-scale machinery shaped ordinary work. He explains how communities gradually abandoned production for profit and retained machines only where they relieved unpleasant labor without impoverishing the work itself.

First appears in chapter 21

Dick's wife and the mother of his children. Their relationship has survived a separation because the society recognizes affection rather than law or property as the basis of partnership. She joins the journey up the Thames with an easy familiarity that reassures Guest.

First appears in chapter 23

A thoughtful young woman living near Runnymede with her grandfather. Her beauty and alertness strongly affect Guest. She values useful country work yet is unusually curious about the lost civilization, sensing both its misery and the intensity produced by struggle.

First appears in chapter 23

Ellen's elderly grandfather, a hospitable countryman whose attachment to old ideas sometimes puts him at odds with the settled happiness around him. He discusses the past with Guest and accompanies Ellen during part of the river journey.