Nightmares of Anarchy: Language and Cultural Change, 1870-1914 explores the function of the anarchist and anarchist rhetoric in the culture of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Britain and the United States. The figure of the anarchist becomes an important symbol in discussions of social change, and anarchism becomes the germ of several aesthetic discourses of the early twentieth century. The concept of anarchism is associated with a number of subjects that together constitute a debate over the direction of society in the late nineteenth century: fears of degeneracy, revolution, and the mob; debates and utopian writing on social and economic organization; and fears arising from a loss of autonomy and control in modern society. By examining many narratives of the time - fiction and nonfiction, journalism and academic writing, canonical and obscure writers - this study traces the discourse surrounding anarchism in order to understand the cultural practices that supported the rise of modern capitalist culture. William M. Phillips teaches nineteenth- and twentieth-century literature at Maryville College in Tennessee.