Stead, W T

Entry updated 1 December 2024. Tagged: Author.

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(1849-1912) UK editor (from 1871) and author; brother of F HerbertStead. He editedBorderland, a journal dealing with psychic phenomena, during 1893-1897, and founded and editedThe Review of Reviews in 1890. His contribution toThe Rajah's Sapphire (1896) uncredited with M PShiel may not extend further than supplying the plot to Shiel. He is perhaps most notorious for an article, "Maiden Tribute to Modern Babylon" (9 July 1885The Pall Mall Gazette), which, perhaps pruriently, details the deflowering of a child prostitute, but which did have some effect in raising the age of consent. His sustained defences of women, including prostitutes, shaped his controversial four months in Chicago, Illinois, where he made highly unpopular speeches and attended the 1893 World's Fair, a visit prefigured inFrom the Old World to the New; Or, a Christmas Story of the World's Fair, 1893 (1892); his appearance at the Fair is not registered in ThomasPynchon'sAgainst the Day (2006), though he is mentioned elsewhere in the book. The summatoryIf Christ Came to Chicago!: A Plea for the Union of All Who Love in the Service of All Who Suffer (1894) fails to entirely escape unctuousness, but its depiction of a religious co-operativeUtopia on socialist lines has points of interest.Blastus, the King's Chamberlain: Being the Review of Reviews Annual for 1896 (1895; vtBlastus the King's Chamberlain: A Political Romance1898) is a tale ofNear Future political intrigue, the second half of which is set in 1900.The Americanization of the World; Or, the Trend of the Twentieth Century (1902), a nonfiction exercise inFutures Studies, accurately prophesies America's supplanting of the British Empire as the twentieth century's dominant empery.The Despised Sex [see Checklist for subtitle] (1903) is constructed as a 1902 report sent – by a visitor to England – to Dione, the queen of Xanthia, a matriarchy in central Africa, for whom Britain is a kind ofLost World.

Stead is presented as a stately wise ghost in RobertSerling'sSomething's Alive on the Titanic (1990), but is treated as being on the wrong side of history in TomStoppard'sThe Invention of Love (performed 1997;1997). Along with John JacobAstor, JacquesFutrelle and F DMillet, he went down on theTitanic. [JC]