It is 1846 and on the Continent (which one? Is there any possible answer at this time other than Europe?) Emile Souvestre publishes The World As It Shall Be, a dystopic view of the year 3000 as shown to the amazed eyes of travelers through time who have slept away the centuries between Souvestre?s time and the ?now? of the story. Billed in this Wesleyan UP edition as the first ?future dystopia in modern European literature? it is also one of the first if not the first illustrated texts of its kind.

(Source: Wesleyan University Press)