This thesis examines seven future-focused texts authored by four New Zealanders: Julius Vogel, Āpirana Ngata, Truby King, and Ettie Rout. ‘The future’ is a neglected lens for historical research and this thesis explores the value of such an approach, using New Zealand society from the 1880s and to the 1920s as a case study. A methodological combination of textual analysis, biography, and historical contexts, including consideration of print culture, allows for nuanced examination of depictions of the future, and suggests such connections are vital to fully understanding histories of the future. This research serves as a framework to inform further exploration of historical future imaginings, either in New Zealand or in other geographic or temporal contexts. From Vogel’s novel Anno Domini 2000 (1889) to Ngata’s 1892 essay The Past and Future of the Maori to King’s and Rout’s twentieth-century guidebooks on the care of babies and the use of contraception, the four authors utilize various textual forms to communicate their imagined future, and commonly frame their ideas within concepts of utopia and dystopia. This thesis compares the futures depicted by male and female authors, and those emerging from Māori and Pākehā cultural contexts. It examines futures envisioned by politicians, community leaders, and ostracized individuals. Shaped by preoccupations with empire, gender, and identity, these future-focused texts highlight relationships between national and global spaces. This in turn allows for a fresh exploration of New Zealand’s past, and especially the country’s colonial histories.