Empire Writing

This is the first anthology to gather together British imperial writing alongside native and settler literature in English, interweaving short stories, poems, essays, travel writing, and memoirs from the phase of British expansionist imperialism known as high empire. A rich and startling diversity of responses to the colonial experience emerges: adventurers, administrators, memsahibs, propagandists and poets intermingle with West Indian and South African nationalists, Indian mystics, Creole balladeers, women activists and native interpreters. This wide-ranging selection reveals the vivid contrasts and subtle shifts in responses to colonial experience, and embraces some of empire's key symbols and emblematic moments.