Invasion literature is a literary genre that was popular in the period between 1871 and the First World War (1914–1918). The invasion novel was first recognised as a literary genre in the UK, with the novella The Battle of Dorking: Reminiscences of a Volunteer (1871), an account of a German invasion of England, which, in the Western world, aroused the national imaginations and anxieties about hypothetical invasions by foreign powers; by 1914 the genre of invasion literature comprised more than 400 novels and stories.
The Battle of Dorking (1871) established the genre of invasion literature. (Cover of the 1914 edition)
Joseph Pennell's 1918 Liberty bond poster calls up the pictorial image of an invaded, burning New York City.
"Promised Horrors of the French Invasion" – a cartoon by the British James Gillray published during the French Revolution and depicting a London occupied by the French
The Battle of Dorking: Reminiscences of a Volunteer is an 1871 novella by George Tomkyns Chesney, starting the genre of invasion literature and an important precursor of science fiction. Written just after the Prussian victory in the Franco-Prussian War, it describes an invasion of Britain by a German-speaking country referred to in oblique terms as The Other Power or The Enemy.
Cover of the 1914 edition
Front cover of the 1871 pamphlet edition of The Battle of Dorking
