Modern Britain was invaded hundreds of times--on paper, on stage and in the imagination. Beginning with the publication of George T. Chesney's short story The Battle of Dorking in 1871, texts, plays, cartoons and other media depicting fictional near-future British military disasters had reached millions of readers and constituted a publishing phenomenon by 1918. These fears and fantasies of imagined wars signalled the birth not only of modern science-fiction, but also of a new way of thinking about public engagement in a nascent democratic society.

A new study of one of nineteenth- and twentieth century Britain's most enduring literary genres, Invasions analyses invasion-scare fiction from its inception in 1871 to the end of the First World War. Invasion narratives were arguably the most successful British literary invention of the nineteenth century: exported, adopted and adapted across the world. More than any other literary genre, invasion-scare fiction was also intimately tied up with the dominating social, political and military questions of Victorian and Edwardian Britain. Invasions outlines the development and form of this literature, and traces the function, use and reception of the stories. It offers a cultural history of the language of invasion-scare fiction, a social history of their promotors and audience, and a political history of their influence.