The Great War in England in 1897

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The Great War in England in 1897 is a short, early invasion novel written by William Le Queux and published in 1894. It helped popularize a genre that imagines Britain facing an external attack.

Plot in simple terms
- The story is set in 1897, when Britain is invaded by a coalition led by France and Russia.
- Early battles go against the British, but patriotic Britons keep fighting.
- Germany eventually comes to Britain’s aid, helping turn the tide.
- In the end the invaders are defeated, and the victors gain spoils: Britain seizes Algeria and Russian Central Asia, while Germany takes Alsace-Lorraine. Britain and the German Empire become the dominant powers in Europe.

Historical angle
- The book imagines an alliance pattern opposite to what would happen in World War I. France and Russia are enemies of Britain here, while Imperial Germany is an ally.
- The work shows how plausible such invasion scenarios felt to readers in the 1890s, a time when tensions and alliances were shifting (the Fashoda incident and the later Entente Cordiale would shape real history).

Publication and reception
- It began as a serial in Answers in 1894 and was later published as a book by Tower Publishing Co., running about 330 pages and going through eight editions.
- The novel influenced later writers and works in the invasion literature tradition.

Influences and legacy
- The Great War in England in 1897 helped shape later invasion fiction, including H. G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds, which uses a similar sudden attack but with a very different moral—aliens rather than human enemies.
- Le Queux continued exploring the theme in later works, such as The Invasion of 1910.

See also and related works
- Invasion literature
- The Invasion of 1910

External availability
- The book is accessible online, including on Project Gutenberg and the Internet Archive.