George Eliot and the British Empire

Download or read book George Eliot and the British Empire written by Nancy Henry and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2002-01-17 with total page 199 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.