Literary Criticism - General & Miscellaneous, Politics & Literature, Women Authors - British - Literary Criticism, English Fiction & Prose Literature - 19th Century - Literary Criticism, Imperialism, British Imperialism & British Empire - History

George Eliot and the British Empire

Name: George Eliot and the British Empire
Author: Nancy Henry
ISBN: 9780521027915

by Nancy Henry, Gillian Beer

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Overview

In this study, Nancy Henry introduces a new 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 post-colonial criticism about Victorian fiction and its relation to empire.

Synopsis

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

About the Author, Nancy Henry

Nancy Henry is Associate Professor in the Department of English at the State University of New York at Binghamton. She is the editor of George Eliot's Impressions of Theophratus Such (1994), Elizabeth Gaskell's Sylvia's Lovers (1997), and Gaskell's Ruth. She is a contributor to both the Oxford Companion to George Eliot and The Cambridge Companion to George Eliot (2001). She has published widely on George Eliot, including essays in the Cambridge Companion to George Eliot and in 'Victorian Literature and Culture'.