The literature appearing in Britain in the opening decade of the twentieth century was profoundly affected by events happening well beyond the geographical boundaries of the British Isles. The war fought in South Africa between British imperial forces and Dutch settlers (commonly known at the time as the Boer War (1899–1902) and now more generally referred to as the Anglo-Boer War) brought to a head many of the anxieties felt by ordinary British and British Empire citizens about the efficacy and sustainability of British imperialism. As this chapter will demonstrate, the war's role in focusing these anxieties is especially evident in the literature which emerged both during the conflict and in the ensuing years of the decade. This literary culture was profoundly influenced by wartime news media, in terms of its content, political positioning and style. We can recognise these effects explicitly in the fiction, discussed in the first section of this chapter, which drew directly upon the conflict for its subject matter. These Anglo-Boer War-centred novels and stories often replicated and extended the compelling narratives and distinctive textual forms evident in wartime reportage and feature writing. A line of direct influence between media coverage of the war and its aftermath can also be traced in in the popularity of ‘invasion’ fiction that appeared in this era. As the second section of this chapter will outline, narratives which imagined Britain under attack from rapacious imperial rivals (seeking blood after the exposure of British weakness during the war) exploited and extended fears whipped up by the Edwardian press. The works of Conrad and Kipling discussed in the third section of the chapter, while not directly focused on war-torn South Africa, appeared in the shadow of the conflict and its media reportage. Readers of this period encountered texts such as Heart of Darkness, Lord Jim and Kim (all of which originally appeared in serial form between 1899 and 1901) alongside incessant day-to-day media coverage of the often uncertain progress of the war.