George Eliot and the British Empire

This study situates George Eliot's life and work within the contexts of mid-nineteenth-century British colonialism and imperialism.

Nancy Henry (Author)

9780521808453, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 17 January 2002

198 pages, 4 b/w illus.
23.7 x 16 x 1.7 cm, 0.46 kg

'… a worthy and impressive study …' Literature & History

In this study Nancy Henry introduces a set of facts that place George Eliot's life and work within the contexts of mid-nineteenth-century British colonialism and imperialism. Henry examines Eliot's roles as an investor in colonial stocks, a parent to emigrant sons, and a reader of colonial literature. She highlights the importance of these contexts to our understanding of both Eliot's fiction and her situation within Victorian culture. Henry argues that Eliot's decision to represent the empire only as it infiltrated the imaginations and domestic lives of her characters illuminates the nature of her Realism. The book also re-examines the assumptions of postcolonial criticism about Victorian fiction and its relation to empire.

List of illustrations
Acknowledgments
List of abbreviations and note on the texts
Introduction
1. Imperial knowledge: George Eliot, G. H. Lewes, and the literature of empire
2. 'Colleagues in failure': emigration and the Lewes boys
3. Investing in empire
4. Daniel Deronda, Impressions of Theophratus Such, and the emergence of imperialism
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: c 1800 to c 1900 [DSBF]