MLR, I03.1, 2oo8 I99 Gallagher argues, was alarmed by thenotion of thedecline of aesthetic value through repetition (for example, by silly lady novelists), causing literaryvalue to decrease as it is 'consumed' by the reader. This enables Gallagher to read themajor characters ofDaniel Deronda convincingly in accordance with the parameters of artisticmoti vation. She then rather curiously reverses chronology by stepping back to consider an earlier text, Scenes ofClerical Life, which she reads as an inherently Malthusian text treating sexuality and culture, and the growth of consciousness. The concluding pages, encompassing a hasty trajectory fromGeorge Eliot via Hardy toT. S. Eliot, are rushed and gestural, but overall The Body Economic will doubtless become re quired reading foranyone seeking to understand the complex lines of affiliation and resistance between economic theoryand the literarytext in themid-Victorian period. I note the following errors: Priestly (p. 68); Harriett Martineau (p. 78); Humphrey House (p. I07); Battaille (p. iI6). LOUGHBOROUGH UNIVERSITY ROGER EBBATSON ScottishFictionand theBritishEmpire. By DOUGLASS. MACK. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. 2006. ix+247Pp. ?I6.99. ISBN 978-0-7486-I8l4-9. This book has useful things to say on how the fictionof 'non-elite people' (p. I2) in Scotland has been presented and consumed. Not surprisingly,Douglas S. Mack, a highly distinguished textual scholar of JamesHogg, provides an illuminating account of the 'EttrickShepherd's' subaltern status and isparticularly interesting on his re lationship with JohnWilson, where Hogg writes in such a way as slyly to subvert Wilson's inauthentic rendition of common country life.To some extent, then,Mack brings awelcome postcolonial focus to Scottish literature, something thathas been very slow todevelop. However, all isnot asmodern here as itseems. Overall the treat ment is constantly in danger of lapsing into something much more old-fashioned: pursuing the inauthentic inorder toestablish the credentials of the culturally authen tic (such as Hogg). Good treatment ofHogg and his self-conscious relationship to Robert Burns is followed by a hotchpotch ofmaterial not always incisively chosen, or critiqued with sufficientcomplexity. For Mack, 'Walter Scott [and] JohnBuchan ... .]did much to sustain the Imperial master-narrative [while] Burns, Hogg [and] Lewis Grassic Gibbon [. . .] question some of the attitudes and assumptions that sustained themaster-narrative of the British Empire' (p. I2). One simply has to quibble here since the high point of the British Empire (inVictorian times) post-dates thewriting ofBurns, Scott, and Hogg. Some of thematerial in thisbook has appeared previously elsewhere, and too often itreads like a farfromentirely tightchain ofmoments in theauthor's selective reading of Scottish literature,where poetic figuressuch as SorleyMacLean and Tom Leonard are shoe-horned into thenarrative to less than good effect (in the case of the latterwe are told limply that he 'is a socialist who writes in the language of his own people' (P. 229)). Ironically,MacLean ispotentially open to fruitfulpostcolonial reading, but Mack's book isabout fiction.Robert Louis Stevenson appears, but largely ina section on Kidnapped thathas interesting things to say,certainly, about the latenineteenth century context (particularly theCrofters' War) to thisnovel set in theeighteenth cen tury. It isastonishing thatnothing is said about Stevenson's The Ebb-Tide, arguably his most piercing account of theBritish colonial mentality. A book about 'Scottish fictionand theBritish Empire' might also turn serious attention to JohnGray's Park (which in strange fantasymode takes its cue from the experiences of the great Scot tish explorer ofAfrica, Mungo Park), butMack seems unaware of thisnovel. An all too traditional narrative of theScottish Enlightenment is found in Mack's mentality, 200 Reviews where Walter Scott isprimed by thismilieu toconform to the commercially prosper ous, new British superstate and itburgeoning imperial ambition. What, then, about JamesBruce ofKinnaird? His accounts ofEthiopia in thesecond half of theeighteenth century were received as fictionwhen he returned toBritain, and Bruce, aman re presenting the strong anthropological urge of theScottish Enlightenment, responded loudly about the complacency of theBritish Christian mindset in its incredulity over thatwhich did not fititspreconceptions. Bruce issurely a key starting-point in the en gagement between theScottish mind and Britain's attitude to 'inferior'peoples. Lewis Grassic Gibbon's Spartacus, strongly informed by thiswriter's colonial experiences serving overseas in theBritish forces in the I920S, does notmerit amention; instead there is extended discussion...