Meccania
1918 novel by Owen Gregory
Meccania: The Super-State is a dystopian novel by Owen Gregory, first published in 1918.
Most of the book describes the fictional country of "Meccania," a nation in Central Europe with obvious resemblances to Germany: Meccania is surrounded by "Francaria" (France), "Luniland" (Britain), "Lugrabia" (Austria) and Idiotica (Russia). Meccania is a place where dissenters are sent to mental hospitals and concentration camps. The state maintains a eugenic breeding program and commands its common citizens when to have children. All letters are censored, and all telephone conversations are monitored. All citizens wear the uniforms of their occupational classes. Among the very complex regulations of the Super-State are those regarding control of worker fatigue: if a given worker's calculated fatigue level is below average, he must work more hours until he is as tired as his compatriots.
The novel's frame story is set in the future (from the novel's perspective) year 1970. A young Chinese traveler named Ming Yuen-hwuy enters Meccania for a five-month stay. Ming's diary and notes describe his dreary and dehumanizing sojourn in a country where the militaristic government dominates social life.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Meccania” as 1918 novel by Owen Gregory. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the arts & letters register because the source frames it as 1918 novel by Owen Gregory. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 15, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6804420. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1918 and 1970.
Rights, attribution and provenance may remain disputed even when a general reference summary presents a stable account. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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Three-step research path
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Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “Meccania” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.