Robots and the “End of Work” in Archibald Lampman’s “City of the End of Things”

This essay examines the representation of work in Archibald Lampman’s “The City of the End of Things” in order to challenge received ideas about Lampman’s socialist politics. In particular, the essay argues that the poem’s negative treatment of automation suggests a disjuncture between his beliefs and those of the Fabian Society, with which he has repeatedly been associated. Arguing that Lampman’s views on labour and production are more consonant with William Morris’s economic theory, the essay counters readings of the poem as a critique of alienated labour, suggesting that Lampman’s primary concern is actually the elimination of work via the application of technology to the production process.