Victorian appropriations of Shakespeare: George Eliot, A.C. Swinburne, Robert Browning, and Charles Dickens

Abstract

This book explores the creation of imperial identities in Britain and several of its colonies- South Africa, India, Australia, Wales- and the ways in which the Victorian press around the world shaped and reflected these identities. The concept of co-histories, borrowed from Edward Said and Frantz Fanon, helps explain how the press shaped the imperial and national identities of Britain and of the colonies into co-histories that were thoroughly intertwined and symbiotic. Exploring a variety of press media, this book argues that the press was a site of resistance and revision by colonial authority for the British government. The contributors analyze the writings of British and colonial writers, editors, and publishers, who projected a view of the empire to their British, colonial, and colonized readers. Topics include 'The Journal of Indian Art and Industry' produced by the British art schools in India, women's periodicals, Indian writers in the British press, 'The Imperial Gazetteer' published in Scotland, the rise of telegraphic news agencies, the British press's images of China seen through exhibitions of its art, the Tory periodical 'Blackwood's Magazine,' and the Imperial Press Conference of 1909.