Ionia (novel)
| Author | Alexander Craig |
|---|---|
| Illustrator | J. C. Leyendecker |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre |
Utopian fiction Speculative fiction Lost world fiction |
| Publisher | E. A. Weeks Co. |
|
Publication date
|
1898 |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover) |
| Pages | 301 pp. |
Ionia: Land of Wise Men and Fair Women is an 1898 utopian novel written by Alexander Craig. It is one work in the major wave of utopian and dystopian fiction that characterized the final decades of the nineteenth century and the start of the twentieth.
Virtually nothing is known of the book's author, Alexander Craig. Though his novel was published in the United States, the story has a strong English setting and ambience.
A London banker named David Musgrave dies prematurely in his mid-fifties, leaving a large fortune to his young wife and small son. The widow devotes her money, time, and energy to improving her home village in Surrey. She educates her son, Alexander Musgrave, to be generous and idealistic; when he comes into his majority and his own fortune, the younger Musgrave devotes himself to a philanthropic enterprise in a London parish. In the course of that work, he meets an impressive man named Jason Delphion, who seems to exist on a level of physical and intellectual development superior to average human beings.
Delphion, an admirer of Musgrave's philanthropic efforts, tells the young Englishman about a hidden country in the remote Himalayas where an ideal and utopian society has evolved. Delphion invites Musgrave to visit the country, and Musgrave is eager to do so. They travel to northern India, and from there they fly, via Ionian aircraft, to the secret valley. Musgrave learns that the people are largely Greek in origin, descended from a cohort of seven thousand ancient Greek mercenaries who served the Persian Empire, and who fled eastward after the victories of Alexander the Great. The Greeks established themselves in their Himalayan valley, and for many generations lived as farmers, herders, and mercenaries in the armies of Indian princes. At the time of the Mughal Empire, a local prince named Timoleon travelled to Europe and brought back knowledge and technology; he led the Ionians in their development of an advanced and deliberately isolated culture.
The travelers land at Iolkos, the Ionian capital, where the buildings are "palatial halls" with "towers and domes," constructed of marble in varying shades. The government is headquartered on an Acropolis, built on an island in the valley's main lake. (Craig's description of the Acropolis of Iolkos, with palaces divided by canals surrounding a "central basin" in which is set a great statue, recalls the Court of Honor at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893, the famous "White City.") The language of the Ionians remains Greek, and the country's main rivers are the Pharos and the Styx. The people are well-educated (university training is common for all), and rational in their dress, manners, and customs.
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