S.I. MARTIN’S INCOMPARABLE WORLD AND THE POSSIBILITIES FOR BLACK BRITISH HISTORICAL FICTION

Abstract

In his 1996 novel Incomparable World, S.I. Martin expresses dissatisfaction with the historiographical representation of 18th‐century black Britain. Through his insistence on the fictionality of the characters he situates within a recognizable London of the 1790s, Martin is able to insist on the centrality of black involvement in British affairs without reducing actual black individuals and communities to mere ciphers within an instrumental anti‐racist political register.