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‘Studying English Literature in Context will undoubtedly advance the
theory and practice of cultural materialist pedagogy in higher edu-
cation. I recommend this lively and enjoyable volume as a valuable
resource for teachers and students of English literature, and as an
excellent anthology of scholarly essays in its own right.’
Caroline Franklin, Swansea University
‘Studying English Literature in Context helps to ease students’ tran-

sition from second- to third-level study by offering scholarly essays
that are written specifically for students. This makes academic writing
and argument more accessible to students coming to such material
for the first time, with the further resources offering the additional
benefit of helping students to think more critically about what they
are reading. Studying English Literature in Context offers new univer-
sity students much-needed support as they work towards the broader/
deeper critical inquiry in which they will engage at later stages of
their programme. It is likely to be widely assigned in undergraduate
survey courses, and much used.’
Naomi McAreavey, University College Dublin
‘Driven by the conviction that texts are fruitfully understood within

the context of their time, this enormously adaptable book man-
ages, without strain, to appeal both to scholars and to students, to
bookworms and to neophytes. It covers the entire history of English
literature and drama with an ease and dexterity matched only by
ambition and range. Critical reflections accompanying each essay
inform s tudents, without dryness, of the scholarly tradition to which
they contribute. This collection deserves a place on reading lists wher-
ever English literature is nurtured and cherished.’
Ronan McDonald, The University of Melbourne
‘Studying English Literature in Context is a superb collection of

essays by leading scholars that will foster stimulating response,
reignite debate, and demand intellectual engagement by readers of
representative texts from the long history of English. The authors
recognise that, from The Dream of the Rood’s multivalence to Aphra
Behn’s colonial novel Oroonoko and Grace Nichols’ feminist poetry,
literature both contributes to, and reflects, sociocultural critique,
linking past modes of creative expression with current conversations
about form, textual ambiguity, literary resistance, and periodisation.
In addition to this impressive set of critical interpretations, generous
resources are provided to situate the student in the long chronology
and complex range of generic, stylistic, material, and performative
possibilities offered by literature. The whole volume works to ensure
enhanced understanding of the significance of poetry, prose, and
drama, both to authors and creators and to audiences globally; as
Poplawski anticipates, this book offers contextured readings, encour-
aging connections between eras, affect, and modalities to amplify the
power of the written and spoken word.’
Elaine Treharne, Stanford University
‘An impeccable selection of wide-ranging but sharply focused texts in

their historical and cultural contexts by seasoned scholars with a keen
sense of the past as well as a sharp eye for essential contemporary
issues such as feminism, environmentalism, immigration, and politics.
The crisp and succinct essays are packed with engaging questions
that suggest lively classroom discussion as well as thoughtful critical
examination.’
Stephen Kern, Ohio State University

Studying English Literature in Context
Ranging from early medieval times to the present, this diverse

collection explores the myriad ways in which literary texts are
informed by their historical contexts. The thirty-one essays draw
on varied themes and perspectives to present stimulating new
readings of both canonical and non-canonical texts and authors.
Written in a lively and engaging style by an international team of
experts, these specially commissioned essays collectively represent
an incisive contribution to literary studies; they will appeal to
scholars, teachers and graduate and undergraduate students. The
book is intended to complement Paul Poplawski’s previous volume,
English Literature in Context, and incorporates additional study
elements designed specifically with undergraduates in mind. With an
extensive chronology, a glossary of critical terms and a study guide
suggesting how students might learn from the essays in their own
writing practices, this volume provides a rich and flexible resource
for teaching and learning.
Paul Poplawski taught at the University of Wales and the University

of Leicester, where he was Director of Studies at Vaughan College
and Senior Lecturer in English. He was the general editor of the two
editions of English Literature in Context (2008, 2017), to which he
also contributed the chapters ‘The Twentieth Century, 1901–39’ and
‘Postcolonial Literature in English’. He is a member of the editorial
board of the Cambridge Edition of the Works of D. H. Lawrence and
co-author of the third edition of A Bibliography of D. H. Lawrence
(2001). In addition to several other books and essays on Lawrence,
he has published a book on Jane Austen (1998) and was the editor
of Encyclopedia of Literary Modernism (2003). Most recently, he was
guest editor for the MHRA Yearbook of English Studies for 2020,
entitled Back to the Twenties: Modernism Then and Now.
Studying English
Literature in Context
Critical Readings
Edited by
Paul Poplawski
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DOI: 10.1017/9781108782999
© Cambridge University Press 2022
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First published 2022
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accurate or appropriate.
Contents
List of Figures page xii

Notes on Contributors xvi
Preface, Volume Outline and Rationale xxiii
Acknowledgements xxviii
Chronology xxix
Introduction
Paul Poplawski 1
Part I Medieval English, 500–1500

Introductory Note 7
1 Finding The Dream of the Rood in Old English Literature 11

Emily V. Thornbury
Critical Reflections and Further Study 24
2 The Translator as Author: The Case of Geoffrey Chaucer’s

The Parliament of Fowls 27
Filip Krajník
3 Arthurian Romance as a Window on to Medieval Life: The Case

of Ywayne and Gawayne and The Awntyrs off Arthure 44
K. S. Whetter
Part II The Renaissance, 1485–1660

Introductory Note 63
4 The Renaissance in England: A Meeting Point 67

Alessandra Petrina
5 ‘Mr Spencer’s Moral Invention’: The Global Horizons of

Early Modern Epic 84
Jane Grogan
viii Contents
6 Arden of Faversham 101

Christa Jansohn
7 ‘A Little Touch of Harry in the Night’: Mysteries of

Kingship and the Stage in Shakespeare’s The Life of
King Henry the Fifth 117
Ina Habermann
8 Poems and Contexts: The Case of Henry Vaughan 132
Robert Wilcher
Part III The Restoration and Eighteenth Century, 1660–1780

9 Periodising in Context: The Case of the Restoration and

Eighteenth Century 151
Lee Morrissey
10 Truth-Telling and the Representation of the Surinam ‘Indians’

in Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko 167
Oddvar Holmesland
11 ‘The Pamphlet on the Table’: The Life and Adventures of

Sir Launcelot Greaves 183
Richard J. Jones
Part IV The Romantic Period, 1780–1832

12 ‘Transported into Asiatic Scenes’: Romanticism and the Orient 203

Daniel Sanjiv Roberts
13 Historical Fiction in the Romantic Period: Jane Porter,

Walter Scott and the Sublime Hero 220
Fiona Price
Critical Reflections and Further Studies 233
Contents ix
14 Jane Austen and Her Publishers: Northanger Abbey

and the Publishing Context of the Early Nineteenth Century 236
Katie Halsey
15 ‘O for a Life of Sensations’ or ‘the Internal and External Parts’:

Keats and Medical Materialism 251
Paul Wright
Part V The Victorian Age, 1832–1901

16 Poetry and Science in the Victorian Period 271

Jordan Kistler
17 ‘In Characters of Tint Indelible’: Life Writing and Legacy

in Charlotte Brontë’s Villette 287
Maria Frawley
18 Money, Narrative and Representation from Dickens to Gissing 305

Ben Moore
19 Reading and Remediating Nineteenth-Century

Serial Fiction: Closing Down and Opening Up Sheridan
Le Fanu’s Carmilla 321
Fionnuala Dillane
20 Public Places, Private Spaces in Fin-de-Siècle British

Women’s Writing 338
Sue Asbee
Part VI The Twentieth Century, 1901–1939

21 D. H. Lawrence’s Women in Love: An Anthropological Reading 357

Stefania Michelucci
x Contents
22 The Epigraph for T. S. Eliot’s Marina: Classical Tradition and

the Modern Era 372
Anna Budziak
23 Passing as a Male Critic: Mary Beton’s Coming of Age in

Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own 389
Judith Paltin
Part VII The Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries, 1939–2020

24 An Ecocritical Reading of the Poetry of Ted Hughes 407

Terry Gifford
25 Women Publishers in the Twenty-First Century: Assessing

Their Impact on New Writing – and Writers 423
Catherine Riley
26 Crisis and Community in Contemporary British Theatre 439

Clare Wallace
Part VIII Postcolonial Literature in English

27 Complexities and Concealments of Eros in the African Novel:
Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart 463
F. Fiona Moolla
28 Bessie Head’s Feminism of Everyday Life 477

Loretta Stec
29 The Gender Politics of Grace Nichols: Joy and Resistance 493

Izabel F. O. Brandão
30 ‘The All-purpose Quote’: Salman Rushdie’s Metacontextuality 508

Joel Kuortti
Contents xi
31 Postcolonial Literature and the World, 2017–2019:

Contemporary Complexities 525
Ulla Rahbek
Appendices 543
Paul Poplawski
Appendix A: Glossary of Critical Terms 545

Appendix B: Study Guide: Learning from the Essays 556
Appendix C: Essays Listed by Genre and Theme 573
Index 578
Figures
1.1 The Ruthwell Cross, Ruthwell, Dumfries and Galloway, c.

730–50. Hugh McKean/Alamy Stock Photo page 12
1.2 East face middle section of the Ruthwell Cross. Historic Images/
Alamy Stock Photo 15
2.1 Miniature from a 1353 manuscript of Le Roman de la Rose
by Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun. Fine Art Images/
Heritage Images/Getty Images 28
2.2 King Richard II and Anne of Bohemia, his queen. From the
fourteenth-century Coronation Order of Service, the Liber
Regalis. Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group via
Getty Images 37
3.1 Set of three panels from an ivory casket carved with scenes from
courtly romances; France, c. 1330–50. Heritage Arts/Heritage
Images via Getty Images 47
3.2 A fourteenth-century manuscript image from Chrétien de
Troyes’ twelfth-century Yvain, the French version of Ywayne
and Gawayne. Courtesy of the Bibliothèque nationale de France,
MS, Français 1433, folio 90r 50
4.1 Europa Prima Pars Terrae In Forma Virginis. Map of Europe in
the form of a queen or maiden, by H. Bünting, 1582. The Picture
Art Collection/Alamy Stock Photo 72
4.2 Title page of Ralph Robinson’s 1551 translation into English
of Thomas More’s Utopia, 1516. Culture Club, Hulton Archive/
Getty Images 76
5.1 Title page of the first Book of The Faerie Queene, 1590. Granger,
NYC/Alamy Stock Photo 85
5.2 William Warner, Albions England: title page, 1589 edition.
Lebrecht Authors/Alamy Stock Photo 89
6.1 Arden’s House, Faversham, Kent. Adrian Chinery/Alamy Stock Photo 102
6.2 Arden of Feversham, first quarto title page, 1592. Art Collection
3/Alamy Stock Photo 103
7.1 Laurence Olivier in a publicity still for the 1944 film version of
Henry V. Silver Screen Collection/Getty Images 119
7.2 Agincourt battle scene in a production of Shakespeare’s
Henry V. Keystone/Getty Images 127
List of Figures xiii
8.1 Frontispiece to the first edition of Henry Vaughan’s Silex

Scintillans, 1650. Pictorial Press/Alamy Stock Photo 133
9.1 First page of Gray’s Elegy Written in a Country Church
Yard, 1753 edition, with Richard Bentley’s engravings. John
Hammond/Alamy Stock Photo 158
10.1 Portrait of Aphra Behn by Sir Peter Lely, c. 1670. Sepia Times/
Universal Images Group via Getty Images 168
10.2 Map of South and North America by Homann Heirs, 1746. Sepia
Times/Universal Images Group via Getty Images 172
11.1 Contents page from the front blue wrapper of the first number
of the British Magazine (January 1760). © Image reproduced by
courtesy of Senate House Library, University of London 187
12.1 James Gillray, The Bow to the Throne, – alias – The Begging
Bow, 1788. Courtesy of the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam 206
12.2 Engraving of a Hindu widow committing sati, 1815. Ann Ronan
Pictures/Print Collector/Getty Images 210
13.1 ‘Houghton dying in the arms of Edward’, an engraving from Sir
Walter Scott’s Waverley, the 1826 Oeuvres completes edition.
DEA Picture Library/De Agostini/Getty Images 226
13.2 Jane Porter depicted as a canonness by George Henry Harlow,
1810. Hulton Archive/Getty Images 229
14.1 James Gillray, Tales of Wonder, 1802. © The Trustees of the
British Museum 244
14.2 Robert Darnton, ‘communications circuit’. Courtesy of Robert Darnton 249
15.1 Engraving of the brain, from The Anatomy of the Brain,
Explained in a Series of Engravings, by Charles Bell, 1802.
Science History Images/Alamy Stock Photo 255
16.1 ‘Man is but a worm’, a cartoon by Edward Linley Sambourne,
Punch Almanack (1882), published 6 December 1881. World
History Archive/Alamy Stock Photo 276
17.1 Charlotte Brontë, published under the name of Currer Bell, title
page of vol. I of Villette, 1853. Historic Images/Alamy Stock Photo 288
17.2 Charlotte Brontë, letter to Thomas De Quincey, signed with the
pen name Currer Bell, 17 June 1847. Culture Club/Getty Images 294
18.1 Tellson’s Bank in A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens:
chapter headnote illustration by John McLenan from All the
Year Round, 28 May 1859. Art Collection/Alamy Stock Photo 313
18.2 A middle-class housewife counts her savings: engraving from
the 1880s. duncan1890/DigitalVision Vectors/Getty Images 316
19.1 Illustration for chapter 14 of Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla in its
final instalment in Dark Blue, 1872. Pictorial Press/Alamy Stock Photo 327
xiv List of Figures
19.2 Illustration for Laura’s ‘nightmare’ in the January instalment of

Dark Blue, 1872. Pictorial Press/Alamy Stock Photo 329
20.1 Poster by Aubrey Beardsley for the Yellow Book, vol. IV, January
1895. Sepia Times/Universal Images Group via Getty Images 340
20.2 Engraving of the Reading Room of the British Museum by
Walter Thornbury, 1897. Time Life Pictures/Mansell/The LIFE
Picture Collection via Getty Images 342
21.1 Lyubov Sergeyevna Popova, Space–Force Construction, 1920–1.
Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images 358
22.1 Pericles and his daughter Marina: illustration from a Victorian
edition of Shakespeare’s plays (London: Cassell, 1864–8).
Prisma/UIG/Getty Images 373
22.2 Hercules driven to madness. Engraving from Tableaux du temple
des muses (Paris, 1655) by Michel de Marolles, known as the
abbé de Marolles. Universal History Archive/Universal Images
Group via Getty Images 378
23.1 Drawing of the Reading Room in the British Museum by
Fortunino Matania, L’Illustrazione Italiana, 28 July 1907. DEA/
Biblioteca/De Agostini/Getty Images 392
24.1 The Calder Valley, West Yorkshire, birthplace of Ted Hughes. Joe
Dunckley/500px/Getty Images 410
24.2 Carol Hughes at the launch in 2004 of the Ted Hughes Poetry
Trail at Stover Country Park near Newton Abbot, Devon. Barry
Batchelor/Alamy Stock Photo 416
25.1 Zadie Smith, Ali Smith and other shortlisted authors for the
2005 Man Booker Prize. Leon Neal/AFP via Getty Images 429
26.1 The Author by Tim Crouch, performed at the Traverse Theatre as
part of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, 2010. Robbie Jack/Corbis
via Getty Images 445
26.2 From a production of Escaped Alone by Caryl Churchill, directed
by James Macdonald at the Royal Court Theatre, Jerwood
Downstairs Theatre, 2016. Geraint Lewis/Alamy Stock Photo 448
27.1 Front cover of the fiftieth anniversary edition of Things Fall
Apart (2008). Jonny White/Alamy Stock Photo 467
28.1 Women from a village near Serowe, Botswana, collecting water,
1950. Photo © Hulton-Deutsch Collection/CORBIS/Corbis via
Getty Images 479
28.2 Bessie Head’s feminism of everyday life: a constellation diagram 490
29.1 Cutting sugar cane in the West Indies, 1833. Photo by Universal
History Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images 497
List of Figures xv
29.2 Copper engraving from Metamorphosis insectorum

Surinamensium by Maria Sibylla Merian (1647–1717).
INTERFOTO/History/Alamy Stock image 501
30.1 Migrants on the road following the Partition of India, October
1947. Margaret Bourke-White/The LIFE Picture Collection via
Getty Image 510
30.2 Map of India, 2015. Peter Hermes Furian/Alamy Stock image 514
31.1 A family seeking refuge cross the Croatian border, 20 September
2015. Achilleas Zavallis/UPI Alamy Stock 533
Notes on Contributors
SUE ASBEE recently retired as Senior Lecturer at the Open University, UK, and is
now an Honorary Associate there. She was the editor of Yellow Book Writers –
the third volume of Jane Spirit et al. (eds), The Women Aesthetes: British Writers
1870–1900 (2013) – which focuses on the last decade of the nineteenth century
and includes women writers like Charlotte Mew, Vernon Lee, John Oliver Hobbs
and Ella D’Arcy and others whose work appeared in the Yellow Book. She has
also published work on American novelists from the same era, Kate Chopin and
Edith Wharton, and later American poets, Langston Hughes, Claude McKay, Allen
Ginsberg and Frank O’Hara.
IZABEL F. O. BRANDÃO recently retired as Professor of Literatures in English

and Contemporary Brazilian Women Writers at the Federal University of Alagoas,
Brazil. Her publications include a book on D. H. Lawrence (2009) and several books
and essays on feminist literary criticism in both Portuguese and English. She is one
of the editors of a feminist anthology in translation, Traduções da cultura: per-
spectivas críticas feministas 1970–2010 (Translations of Culture: Feminist Critical
Perspectives 1970–2010) (2017). Her latest book, in collaboration, is Literatura e
ecologia: trilhando novos caminhos críticos (Literature and Ecology: Tracking New
Critical Paths) (2019). She is also a poet; her latest collection is As horas da minha
alegria (The Hours of My Joy) (2013).
ANNA BUDZIAK is Associate Professor at the University of Wrocław, Poland. She

has co-edited a book on Richard Shusterman’s somaesthetics and written three
monographs: Historia u T. S. Eliota, in Polish (2002), Text, Body and Indeterminacy:
Doppelgänger Selves in Pater and Wilde, shortlisted for the ESSE Book Award
2008–2010, and T. S. Eliot’s Ariel Poems: Making Sense of the Times (2021).
FIONNUALA DILLANE is Professor in Nineteenth-Century Literature at the School

of English, Drama and Film, University College Dublin, Ireland. She researches and
publishes on George Eliot and more generally in the fields of Victorian print cul-
tures, genre history and memory studies. She is the vice president of the Research
Society for Victorian Periodicals.
MARIA FRAWLEY is Professor of English at the George Washington University,

USA, where she teaches courses in nineteenth-century British literature and chairs
the Department of English. She is the author of three books: A Wider Range: Travel
Writing by Women in Victorian England (1994), Anne Brontë (1996) and Invalidism
Notes on Contributors xvii
and Identity in Nineteenth-Century Britain (2004). In addition, she has prepared an

edition of Harriet Martineau’s Life in the Sick-Room for Broadview Press (2003).
She is co-editor of Routledge’s Companion to Jane Austen (2021), and is currently
working on several projects related to nineteenth-century life writing.
TERRY GIFFORD is a former chair of the Ted Hughes Society, a visiting research
fellow in Environmental Humanities at Bath Spa University, UK, and Profesor
Honorifico at the Universidad de Alicante, Spain. He is the author/editor of seven
books on Ted Hughes and his other published works include Pastoral (2020),
Reconnecting with John Muir (2006) and Green Voices (2011).
JANE GROGAN is Associate Professor in Renaissance Literature at University

College Dublin, Ireland. She is the author of two monographs, two edited collec-
tions of essays, a critical edition of the first English translation of Xenophon’s
Cyropaedia, and numerous articles. A past president of the International Spenser
Society, her most recent research on Spenser looks at his reception in Irish litera-
ture from Yeats onwards, and at auto-fiction as a potential resource for rethinking
Spenser’s corpus.
INA HABERMANN is Professor of English Literature at the University of

Basle, Switzerland, and acted as director of the Centre of Competence Cultural
Topographies from 2009 to 2017. Her publications include Staging Slander and
Gender in Early Modern England (2003), Myth, Memory and the Middlebrow:
Priestley, du Maurier and the Symbolic Form of Englishness (2010) and, as edi-
tor with Michelle Witen, Shakespeare and Space: Theatrical Explorations of the
Spatial Paradigm (2016). She ran the Swiss National Science Foundation project
British Literary and Cultural Discourses of Europe (2014–17), and her research
interests include middlebrow writing, Britishness and Englishness, literary other-
worlds and discourses of Anglophilia.
KATIE HALSEY is Professor of Eighteenth-Century Literature at the University of

Stirling, Scotland, and the director of its Centre for Eighteenth-Century Studies.
She is the principal investigator of the project Books and Borrowing, 1750–1830:
An Analysis of Scottish Borrowers’ Registers, funded by the AHRC, and the author,
among other works, of Jane Austen and Her Readers, 1786–1945 (2012).
ODDVAR HOLMESLAND is Professor of English Literature at the University of

Agder, Kristiansand, Norway. He teaches courses in literature and culture ranging
over the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries, and his research interests include
early modern as well as modern literature. He is the author of Utopian Negotiation:
Aphra Behn and Margaret Cavendish (2013), Form as Compensation for Life:
Fictive Patterns in Virginia Woolf’s Novels (1998) and A Critical Introduction to
Henry Green’s Novels: The Living Vision (1986).
xviii Notes on Contributors
CHRISTA JANSOHN is Professor of British Culture at the University of Bamberg,

Germany. Her publications include a monograph on the ‘Shakespeare Apocrypha’
and its reception in Germany (2000) and bilingual editions of Shakespeare’s
Sonnets (1992), A Lover’s Complaint and the narrative poems (1993). She is
editor of German Shakespeare Studies at the Turn of the Twenty-first Century
(2006); together with Richard Fortheringham and Robert White of Shakespeare’s
World/World Shakespeares (2006); with Lena Cowen Orlin and Stanley Wells of
Shakespeare without Boundaries (2011); and with Dieter Mehl of Shakespeare
Jubilees: 1769–2014 (2015).
RICHARD J. JONES is Senior Lecturer in English Literature at the Open University,
UK. He is the author of Tobias Smollett in the Enlightenment: Travels through
France, Italy and Scotland (2011) and recent articles on Smollett’s work in the
Journal of Eighteenth-Century Studies (2018), Literature Compass (2018) and The
Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation (2019).
JORDAN KISTLER is Lecturer in Victorian Literature at the University of Strathclyde,

Scotland. Her work explores the intersections between science and literature in the
nineteenth century, and she has published on a range of topics in this area, includ-
ing blindness, mesmerism and museum display.
FILIP KRAJNÍK is a lecturer in English literature at the Department of English and

American Studies, Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University in Brno, Czech Republic.
His main research interests are late medieval English poetry and early modern
English theatre. He is currently co-editing a volume on medieval female piety
entitled Women across Borders (forthcoming). With his research team, he is also
working on a project focusing on the transnational and multi-genre aspects of the
English theatre of the Restoration period. An edited volume, tentatively entitled
Restoration Reshaping, is expected in 2022.
JOEL KUORTTI is Professor of English at the University of Turku, Finland. His

major research interests are postcolonial theory, Indian literature in English,
transnational identity, transculturation and translocality, gender and cultural
studies, and ordinariness. His books include Fictions to Live In: Narration
as an Argument for Fiction in Salman Rushdie’s Novels (1998), Tense Past,
Tense Present: Women Writing in English (2003), Writing Imagined Diasporas:
South Asian Women Reshaping North American Identity (2007), Reconstructing
Hybridity (co-edited with J. Nyman; 2007), Changing Worlds/Changing Nations:
The Concept of Nation in the Transnational Era (co-edited with O. P. Dwivedi;
2012), Critical Insights: Midnight’s Children (2014), Transculturation and
Aesthetics (2015) and Thinking with the Familiar in Contemporary Literature
and Culture ‘Out of the Ordinary’ (co-edited with K. Ilmonen, E. Valovirta and J.
Korkka; 2019).
Notes on Contributors xix
STEFANIA MICHELUCCI is Professor of English Studies at the University of

Genoa, Italy. As a visiting scholar, she has also taught in many other universi-
ties around the world, including the University of California, Berkeley, USA, and
Kyoto Tachibana University, Japan. Her publications include Space and Place in
the Works of D. H. Lawrence (2002), The Poetry of Thom Gunn: A Critical Study
(2009) and many essays on writers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries,
with particular attention on the relationship between literature and the visual
arts. With Ian Duncan and Luisa Villa she has recently co-edited a volume of
essays entitled The British Aristocracy in Popular Culture, Essays on 200 years
of Representations (2020). She is now working on a new book on Thom Gunn.
F. FIONA MOOLLA is a lecturer in the English Department at the University of the

Western Cape, South Africa. Among other academic and non-academic publica-
tions, her works include, as author, Reading Nuruddin Farah: The Individual, the
Novel & the Idea of Home (2014), and, as editor, Natures of Africa: Ecocriticism
and Animal Studies in Contemporary Cultural Forms (2016). Her current consum-
ing passion is the study of the literary and social significance of eros in African
and other cultures.
BEN MOORE is Assistant Professor in English Literature at the University of

Amsterdam, Netherlands, where he teaches a range of undergraduate and post-
graduate courses. His research focuses mainly on cities, architecture and money in
the nineteenth-century novel. He has published in journals including Modernism/
modernity, Journal of Victorian Culture, Gaskell Journal, Modern Language Review,
Victorian Literature and Culture and Dickens Quarterly. He is presently working
on a monograph entitled Invisible Architecture in Nineteenth-Century Literature:
Rethinking Urban Modernity.
LEE MORRISSEY, Professor and Alumni Distinguished Professor of English at

Clemson University, USA, is the author of From the Temple to the Castle: An
Architectural History of British Literature, 1660–1760 (1999) and The Constitution
of Literature: Literacy, Democracy, and Early English Literary Criticism (2007).
He is the editor of Debating the Canon: A Reader from Addison to Nafisi (2005)
and associate editor of the Encyclopedia of British Literature, 1660–1789 (2015).
He has been a Fulbright Scholar at the National University of Ireland Galway and a
McCarthy Fellow at Marsh’s Library, Dublin, and is currently writing a monograph
on John Milton.
JUDITH PALTIN is an associate professor in the Department of English Language

and Literatures at the University of British Columbia, Canada. She has published
Modernism and the Idea of the Crowd with Cambridge University Press (2020),
articles in the James Joyce Quarterly, The Conradian, Conradiana, The Wildean and
Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, and a chapter in Affective
xx Notes on Contributors
Materialities: Reorienting the Body in Modernist Literature (2019; edited by Kara

Watts, Molly Volanth Hall and Robin Hackett).
ALESSANDRA PETRINA is Professor of English Literature at the University of

Padua, Italy. Her research focuses primarily on late medieval and early modern
intellectual history, and on Anglo-Italian cultural relations. Her publications
include The Kingis Quair (1997), Cultural Politics in Fifteenth-Century England:
The Case of Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester (2004) and Machiavelli in the British
Isles: Two Early Modern Translations of the Prince (2009). She has edited and
co-edited a number of volumes, including (with Clara Calvo) Shakespeare and
Popular Culture (2018), and (with Ian Johnson) The Impact of Latin Culture on
Medieval and Early Modern Scottish Writing (2018). Her latest book is Petrarch’s
Triumphi in the British Isles (MHRA Tudor and Stuart Translation Series, 2020).
FIONA PRICE is author of Reinventing Liberty: Nation, Commerce and the Historical
Novel from Walpole to Scott (2016) and Revolutions in Taste 1773–1818: Women
Writers and the Aesthetics of Romanticism (2009), and editor, with Benjamin Dew,
of Historical Writing in Britain, 1688–1830: Visions of History (2014). She has
edited two historical novels, Jane Porter’s The Scottish Chiefs (1810; 2007) and
Sarah Green’s Private History of the Court of England (1808; 2011). She is currently
working on a monograph on the idea of the ‘real’ in the Romantic period novel.
She is Professor in English Literature at the University of Chichester, UK.
ULLA RAHBEK is Associate Professor of Postcolonial Literatures at Copenhagen

University, Denmark. Her most recent publications are Refugee Talk: Propositions on
Ethics and Aesthetics, with Eva Rask Knudsen (Pluto, 2022), British Multicultural
Literature and Superdiversity (2019), In Search of the Afropolitan, with Eva Rask
Knudsen (2016), and Global Voices (Gyldendal, 2016).
CATHERINE RILEY is a writer and the director of Primadonna Festival, the first
literary festival in the UK to give prominence specifically to work by women, as
well as to writers of all genders, economic statuses and ethnicities whose voices
are not usually heard. She is an expert on contemporary feminist publishing in
the UK. She has published Feminism and Women’s Writing: An Introduction (with
Lynne Pearce) (2018) and The Virago Story: Assessing the Impact of a Feminist
Publishing Phenomenon (2018), as well as numerous journal articles and chap-
ters. She has taught English Literature and Gender Studies at Lancaster and
Northumbria Universities and Birkbeck College, London.
DANIEL SANJIV ROBERTS studied English at Chennai, Hyderabad and Cambridge,

and teaches at Queen’s University Belfast, Northern Ireland. He is the author of De
Quincey, Coleridge and the High Romantic Argument (2000) and has edited texts
by Thomas De Quincey, Robert Southey and Charles Johnston for major critical
Notes on Contributors xxi
editions. His edited collections (with Robert Morrison) include Thomas De Quincey:
New Theoretical and Critical Directions (2007), Romanticism and Blackwood’s
Magazine: ‘An Unprecedented Phenomenon’ (2013), and (with Jonathan Wright)
Ireland’s Imperial Connections, 1775–1947 (2019).
LORETTA STEC is Professor of English at San Francisco State University, USA,

where she teaches twentieth-century literatures in English with an emphasis on
women writers, as well as animal studies. She has published on, among others,
Virginia Woolf, Rebecca West, Djuna Barnes, D. H. Lawrence, Gertrude Stein,
Naomi Mitchison and Bessie Head. She is currently at work on a project on con-
templative pedagogy, linking meditation practices with modernist representations
of consciousness.
EMILY V. THORNBURY is currently Associate Professor of English at Yale

University, USA, specialising in Old English and Anglo-Latin poetry and poetics.
Her first book, Becoming a Poet in Anglo-Saxon England (2014), explored pre-
Conquest poetry as a fundamentally social practice; her second monograph, The
Virtue of Ornament, will consider theories of labour and value in early medieval
literature and art. Before moving to Yale, she taught at the University of California
at Berkeley.
CLARE WALLACE is Associate Professor at the Department of Anglophone

Literatures and Cultures at Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic. Her
teaching is mainly focused on Irish studies and theatre studies. She is author of
The Theatre of David Greig (2013) and Suspect Cultures: Narrative, Identity and
Citation in 1990s New Drama (2006). She has edited a number of books, including
Monologues: Theatre, Performance, Subjectivity (2008), Stewart Parker: Television
Plays (2008) and (with Anja Müller) Cosmotopia: Transnational Identities in David
Greig’s Theatre (2011). She is a member of research group British Theatre in the
Twenty-First Century: Crisis, Affect, Community, funded by the Spanish Ministry
of Economy and Competitiveness and FEDER (European Union). She is also Key
Researcher in the European Regional Development Fund project Creativity and
Adaptability as Conditions of the Success of Europe in an Interrelated World,
which has supported this work.
K. S. WHETTER is Professor of Medieval English at Acadia University, Nova Scotia,

Canada, and Past President of the North American Branch of the International
Arthurian Society. His principal teaching and research interests are the romance
and epic-heroic genres and the medieval Arthurian legend, particularly Malory’s
Morte Darthur. His Arthurian publications include articles in Arthuriana, Arthurian
Literature and Speculum as well as the books The Manuscript and Meaning of
Malory’s Morte Darthur: Rubrication, Commemoration, Memorialization (2017),
Understanding Genre and Medieval Romance (2008), Re-Viewing Le Morte Darthur:
xxii Notes on Contributors
Texts and Contexts, Characters and Themes (co-edited with Raluca L. Radulescu;
2005) and The Arthurian Way of Death: The English Tradition (co-edited with
Karen Cherewatuk; 2009).
ROBERT WILCHER retired as Reader in Early Modern Studies in the English

Department at the University of Birmingham, UK, in 2007. In addition to The
Writing of Royalism 1628–1660 (2001), he has published many articles on early
modern literature and twentieth-century drama, and books on Andrew Marvell,
Arnold Wesker and Sir John Suckling. He is a joint editor of The Works of Henry
Vaughan (Oxford University Press, 2018) and the author of Keeping the Ancient
Way: Aspects of the Life and Work of Henry Vaughan (2021). He is an honorary
fellow of the Shakespeare Institute.
PAUL WRIGHT is a former assistant dean of the University of Wales Trinity Saint
David and now a part-time lecturer in English and creative writing and a book-
seller. He has researched and published on British Romanticism and contemporary
poetry, and particularly on the connections between science and poetry.
Preface, Volume Outline and Rationale
What do you get if you take the text out of context? A con? Well, perhaps not a
confidence trick exactly, but surely some kind of sleight of hand which creates the
illusion of something entirely self-contained, whose meanings and significance
are magically self-generated without any apparent connection to history and the
complex swirling networks of language, culture and society that shape and inform
all our lives.
It may be true that, as long as we can understand the language it is written in,
a text can appear to be perfectly comprehensible without our knowing too much
about the particular historical circumstances out of which it grew and without
thinking too much about how our own contexts as active readers might influ-
ence the meanings we derive from it. But this apparent autonomy of signification
obscures the fact that individual texts in themselves would have no meaning at
all without the historically evolved frameworks of language, culture and society
that have brought them into being as signifying entities in the first place. It also
obscures the individual’s crucial ‘activation’ of meaning in the very process of
reading, a process that inevitably has its own contexts and associated frameworks
of interpretation.
Whether or not we are consciously aware of it, we are constantly drawing on
‘contextual’ information to make sense of the many material and symbolic ‘texts’
around us. In decoding and processing symbolic written texts in particular, we
draw from our internalised store of information, knowledge, beliefs, assumptions
and understanding about the world. And even if that store of ‘ready-made’ con-
textual resources is lacking in some way, we will still, as meaning-making crea-
tures, automatically smooth over any gaps or anomalies to try to make sense
of things as best we can – or as best suits us – even if this is based on a sort of
creative guesswork. In this way most of us can make reasonably good sense of
most of the texts we read, even if they were written at some distance from us,
chronologically, geographically or culturally, in times, places or cultures where
our grasp of relevant contexts must be largely uncertain. It is here that the sleight
of hand I mentioned comes into play most obviously – that is, when we take the
text out of context and simply assimilate what we read to our own inner and often
unexamined ‘map’ of the world. And it is here, therefore, where critically contex-
tualised readings of texts such as are presented in this collection can help not only
to provide us with richer, fuller contextual understanding of particular texts, but
also to sensitise us to all the things we don’t know we don’t know about many of
xxiv Preface, Volume Outline and Rationale
the texts we read and believe we understand. Imagine, for instance, what a reader
in thirty years’ time might make of these final words from a recent poem by Grace
Nichols: ‘I can’t breathe’ (‘Breath’, 2020). Most of us today, in 2022, will immedi-
ately understand the connotations of these words because of the contexts of the
continuing coronavirus pandemic and the brutal police murder of George Floyd
in 2020. Detached from these contexts, however, readers in 2052 will probably
miss the full significance of the line on first reading (even if, unfortunately, they
are still likely to recognise its echoing of the climate emergency). Nichols’s poem
was written to commemorate the 1977 Battle of Lewisham and would therefore
have another specific historical context to be retrieved and explored as well (see
www.explore.gold/breath).
There are, in fact, myriad complex ways in which texts depend for their mean-
ings on ‘contextual’ factors, and this volume’s richly diverse collection of essays,
spanning the whole of English literary history, seeks to explore and elucidate
some of these ways by setting a wide range of texts and contexts in illuminating
dialogue with one another. ‘Context’ may seem to be a simple concept, but this
is far from the case, as will be seen, and one aim of this volume is to refine our
understanding of how texts and contexts feed off each other by considering some
of the many material, institutional and symbolic contexts that have dialogically
informed English literature from its beginnings in Anglo-Saxon times through to
the globalised present.
Taking in all the main literary genres and considering a balanced mixture of both
well-known and lesser-known texts and authors, the essays range variously across
social, political, economic, religious, scientific and literary-critical contexts. They
engage with many topics and issues of contemporary relevance – such as social
crisis and precarity, migration, racial and gender inequalities, and the threat to our
environment – and draw on a number of critical fields and perspectives, includ-
ing anthropology, cultural materialism, ecocriticism, everyday life studies, feminism,
genre studies, life writing, New Historicism, postcolonialism and print culture studies.
The volume’s emphasis on texts and contexts should be seen as an equal empha-
sis on both elements; in turn, its overall approach presupposes a view of literature
as a form of active social critique where literary texts are seen as shaping contexts
as much as they are shaped by them. The dialogue between the two is not always
neatly balanced and generally not directly synchronous in time, but one of the
most highly valued qualities of literature has always been its ability to hold up a
critical mirror to society, and the analysis of this function of texts naturally plays a
major role here. Moreover, as already suggested, in looking into the mirror of texts
in their own historical periods, many of the essays also refract critical light on
facets of our own contemporary society – and this in turn reflects an overarching
aspiration of this volume to convey a compelling sense of the always immediate
relevance of studying English literature in context.
Preface, Volume Outline and Rationale xxv
Volume Outline and Rationale
As will become clear, there is an important distinction to be noted between the

essays and the book’s supplementary study support elements. The essays, that is,
have been conceived as contributions to critical scholarship within literary studies
and have been written, accordingly, at the levels of sophistication that one would
normally expect to find in scholarly journals and other essay anthologies (such as
the well-known series of Cambridge Companion volumes, for example). The study
support elements, on the other hand, have been conceived and written especially
with students (and their teachers) in mind, with the intention of helping students
to make the most of the essays and to draw lessons from them in terms of devel-
oping their own critical practice. There is no reason why serious students should
not find most of the essays in this volume readily accessible – especially if they are
read in conjunction with the book’s study support elements and, where relevant,
with advice and guidance from teachers – but the key point here is that, unlike
those study support elements, the essays are not written solely for students, but are
intended as mainstream scholarly essays for a broad academic audience. The sense
in which the essays are particularly intended for students, when seen together as
an integral part of the whole book, is in the sense of offering students a varied
range of models of how criticism is generally conducted within English studies
which they can then draw upon in their own evolving essay writing practice.
Following a general introduction, the volume presents thirty-one essays organ
ised, as follows, into seven broad chronological parts and an eighth part on post-
colonial literature (whose period span has conventionally been seen as similar to
that of the immediately preceding section, though it has roots going back much
further in time, as several of the essays in earlier sections here testify):
I Medieval English, 500–1500
II The Renaissance, 1485–1660
III The Restoration and Eighteenth Century, 1660–1780
IV The Romantic Period, 1780–1832
V The Victorian Age, 1832–1901
VI The Twentieth Century, 1901–1939
VII The Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries, 1939–2020
VIII Postcolonial Literature in English
The grouping of the essays into these traditional literary periods, along with a final
part on postcolonial literature, is partly a matter of convenience as it mirrors the
structure of my earlier Cambridge volume, English Literature in Context (2nd edn,
2017), and will facilitate cross-referencing between the two books for those who
wish to use the two together (for example, to set the focused readings here against
the general historical contexts there). However, as suggested above, many of the
xxvi Preface, Volume Outline and Rationale
essays address issues which cut across chronological lines, and it is part of the
purpose of the book positively to suggest thematic continuities between the essays
and links across the periods they represent. This is not to suggest that there are
continuous lines of argument from essay to essay, or any narrowly prescribed set
of themes for the book. The essays are unified first and foremost by their common
critical concern to explore texts in relation to their contexts – but, as far as subject
matter goes, each individual essay can be approached entirely on its own terms, if
the reader so wishes. In that respect, the volume should be seen more as a ‘miscel-
lany’ of critical readings rather than as a strongly themed anthology. Nevertheless,
for readers who do want to pursue thematic links, there is plenty of scope to do so.
To aid in this, each of the eight parts is preceded by an introductory note section
which, in addition to introducing the individual essays within that part of the
book, specifically draws attention to such links and continuities throughout the
volume and suggests some ways in which readers might set essays from different
periods in fruitful dialogue with one another.
Beginning students in particular will find it helpful to refer to English Literature
in Context if they would like to consolidate their knowledge and understanding
of the broad historical and cultural backgrounds to English literature which the
essays here generally take for granted. I do, however, also signal clearly in my
introductory notes where there are especially useful links in the former volume to
specific parts or individual essays in the present book.
Each essay is immediately preceded by a short abstract summarising the main
focus and argument of the essay. Among other things, it is hoped that this will be
a helpful browsing feature for readers who wish to read selectively within what
is clearly a large collection. Notes and references are found at the end of each
individual essay. After these endnotes, each essay then has its own short supple-
mentary section entitled ‘Critical Reflections and Further Study’ in which con-
tributors reflect on the development of their essays and offer some questions and
suggestions for further thought, research and reading. These sections have been
designed with undergraduate students (and their teachers) particularly in mind,
and one anticipated use of them is as a stimulus for classroom or seminar discus-
sion following a careful independent reading of the related essay. An additional
aim here has been to add a personal dimension to the essays in which contribu-
tors can share something of their own development as critical practitioners and
thus perhaps ‘demystify’ the process of academic writing for students a little. It is
for this reason that these sections vary somewhat according to the contributor’s
preferred style of engagement with the reader, although there are some standard
features common to them all. For example, no endnotes have been used in these
sections and all references are given fully either within the running text or in a
further reading list at the end of the piece (although occasionally cross-references
to a relevant endnote in the essay itself are given).
Preface, Volume Outline and Rationale xxvii
Further related aids to study in the volume are provided by the chronology at
the start of the book and the three appendices at the end. The chronology presents
a selective list of historical and cultural events alongside literary developments
and is designed to help readers situate the main subjects of the essays in their
broad historical and literary contexts. To help in mapping out the waypoints of
the essays within a long history, I have highlighted at first mention any authors
who are the principal focus of discussion in an essay, along with the key texts
that are discussed. The glossary of critical terms in Appendix A provides short
definitions of some of the key terms that appear within the volume. Appendix
B presents a study guide for students, exploring the various ways in which they
might optimise their learning from the essays and draw on them as models in their
own academic practice, especially in their essay writing. In this, the study guide
highlights one important ambition of the book as a whole, which, as mentioned
earlier, is to offer a convenient source of exemplary contextualised critical read-
ings that can be selectively mapped on to a range of study programmes and used
flexibly at a number of levels to enhance and consolidate learning, teaching and
research. Appendix C offers two alternative and non-chronological orderings of
the essays – one organised according to genre and one according to theme. This
offers an additional aid to considering the links and continuities across essays and
periods, and, of course, this appendix can also be used in conjunction with the
book’s index in order to plot analytical routes through the essays.
Despite the large size of this collection, it should go without saying that, even
with so many essays, it cannot pretend to cover all relevant aspects of English lit-
erary history, nor to deal comprehensively with the mass of topics and issues which
that long history has inevitably thrown up. While the book does offer generous
coverage of authors, topics, texts and contexts, there are inevitably many gaps and
discontinuities in this provisional ‘story’ of English literature in context – and, of
course, all the essays are merely ‘essays’ (explorative, speculative ‘attempts’) on
their subjects and not the last word. Nevertheless, I sincerely hope that the volume
establishes a sufficiently coherent overall narrative to provide a firm basis for those
who wish to undertake further critical explorations along similar lines.
Acknowledgements
First and foremost I would like to thank my contributors for their superb scholar
ship and professionalism in helping me to bring this project to fruition. It has
been a great pleasure and privilege to work with such a talented and supportive
group of colleagues and I thank them sincerely for their enthusiastic cooperation
and encouragement throughout the long process of this volume’s development. I
am particularly grateful to Terry Gifford and Ulla Rahbek for starting things off
at a brisk pace with their early submissions, and to Robert Wilcher for stepping
in so helpfully at a relatively late stage in the project. My warm thanks, too, to
contributors Anna Budziak, Katie Halsey, Judith Paltin and K. S. Whetter for their
extra work in contributing to the book’s glossary. I am indebted to Emily Hockley
at Cambridge for entrusting me with this project in the first place and for helping
to shape and advance it in its early stages. I am also sincerely grateful to several
other people at the Press for their invaluable assistance: to Natasha Burton for
help during the book’s early gestation and then, as its production manager, for
steering it smoothly through to publication; to George Laver for his careful admin-
istrative work and in helping to finalise the book’s images; to Rachel Blaifeder
for earlier administrative assistance; to Dino Costi for the excellent index; and to
Alex Wright for his good offices in ensuring the book’s timely publication. Hilary
Hammond, the book’s copy-editor, deserves special thanks for her meticulous
attention to detail and for her many felicitous suggestions for improving the text.
Sincere thanks for their meticulous work are also due to the indefatigable Denesh
Shankar and the typesetting team of Integra, India. The anonymous reviewers of
the book’s original proposal made many very helpful and encouraging comments
which helped to advance the project and for which I am extremely grateful; and
my thanks, too, for similarly helpful comments, to the anonymous reviewers of
the later manuscript. I would like to thank my fellow contributors to the ‘parent’
volume, English Literature in Context, for laying there such an excellent founda-
tion for this book, and I am grateful to them also for various forms of direct sup-
port with this project: my warm thanks, then, to Valerie Allen, Andrew Hiscock,
Peter Kitson and John Brannigan – and double thanks to Maria Frawley and Lee
Morrissey who, I am delighted to say, were also able to contribute essays here.
Warm thanks too to Lynne Pearce for long-standing and continuing intellectual
and ideological inspiration as well as for her immediate help with this book. For
their help, I would also like to thank Lynda Prescott and Helen Wilcox. For, among
other things, invaluable technological support, my love and thanks to Emily and
Simon and grandchildren Poppy, Oscar and Charlie. For just about everything else,
my love and gratitude to my wife, Angie.
Chronology
The following chronology is highly selective and aims simply to provide a point
of quick historical reference and literary orientation in relation to the main texts
and issues considered in this volume. Most of the works and authors referred to
in the essays are included here. The titles of works which feature prominently in
the volume are in boldface and the names of authors who feature prominently are
in boldface at first mention. The entries in the left-hand column relate primarily,
though not exclusively, to British history and culture.
In creating this resource, I have often drawn on the more detailed chronologies
to be found in my earlier edited volume English Literature in Context (2nd edn,
2017), and I therefore gratefully acknowledge their help in this task of my co-
contributors to that volume.
HISTORY AND CULTURE LITERATURE
55 bce –ce Romans in Britain
410
449 Bede’s date for arrival of Germanic mercenaries to Britain;
piecemeal Anglo-Saxon settlement from now
Late 400s / Gildas, The Ruin of Britain (L), source for Bede
early 500s
597 St Augustine brings Roman Christianity (and script) to Kent
635 St Aidan from Iona founds Lindisfarne monastery, Northumbria
657–80 ‘Cædmon’s Hymn’

674 Founding of Monkwearmouth monastery, Northumbria, where Bede
(672/3–735) was educated as a child before moving to the twin
monastery of Jarrow (founded 682)
c. 678 English Christian missions to the Continent Battle of Finnsburgh
Earliest original date for Beowulf
c. 698 Dream of the Rood
Lindisfarne Gospels (L)
c. 730–50 Ruthwell Cross, Scotland: stone monument with runic inscriptions
from Dream of the Rood
731 Bede, Ecclesiastical History of the English People (L)
793 Danish invasions begin; Lindisfarne monastery sacked
800 Charlemagne, Holy Roman Emperor Approximate date for ‘Cynewulf’ poems: Juliana, Christ II (in Exeter
Book, c. 950), Fates of the Apostles, Elene (in Vercelli Book, c. 950)
Old English (OE) riddles
871 Alfred the Great, King of Wessex, then of Anglo-Saxons Possible date of Andreas
c. 880 Kingdom of the Anglo-Saxons and boundaries of Danelaw Anglo-Saxon Chronicle begun
established.
924 Æthelstan, King of Anglo-Saxons, then of English (927)
937 Battle of Brunanburh: Æthelstan defeats Norsemen and Scots Battle of Brunanburh recorded as poem in Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
939 Edmund, first king of all England
c. 950 Exeter Book (–c. 1000), Vercelli Book (containing earliest homilies),
Junius manuscript
Beowulf manuscript
c. 980 Second wave of Viking invasions (–1066)
991 Battle of Maldon Battle of Maldon composed within twenty years
Danegeld first paid
c. 998 Ælfric, Latin Grammar in OE; Colloquy (L)
1014 Wulfstan, Archbishop of York, Sermo Lupi ad Anglos in OE
1066 Battle of Hastings: William of Normandy defeats Harold
1086 Domesday land survey completed.
1096–99 First Crusade (Jerusalem stormed 1099)
c. 1100 Chanson de Roland
c. 1137 Geoffrey of Monmouth, History of the Kings of Britain (L): first
sustained account of King Arthur
1154 Henry II OE Peterborough Chronicle ends
1169–71 Invasion of Ireland
1170 Murder of Thomas Becket
1177–81 Chrétien de Troyes, Chevalier au lion (or Yvain)
1189 Richard I (–1216) Approximate date for The Owl and the Nightingale
1199 John I
1215 Pope Innocent III, Fourth Lateran Council
John signs Magna Carta
1216 Henry III
c. 1220 Ancrene Riwle (or Ancrene Wisse)
c. 1230–75 Roman de la Rose composed in two stages, from the 1230s by
Guillaume de Lorris and by Jean de Meun about forty years later
c. 1250 First English (metrical) romances: King Horn, Floris and Blauncheflur
1272 Edward I
1275 First formal meeting of Parliament Approximate date for English fabliaux, Dame Sirith, Fox and the Wolf
1282–83 Conquest of Wales by Edward I
c. 1285 Hereford Mappa Mundi
1290 Jews expelled from England
c. 1290s? Of Arthour and of Merlin (in Auchinleck manuscript, c. 1330), non-
alliterative romance
Metrical romances: Havelok the Dane, Arthour and Merlin, Kyng
Alisaunder, Sir Tristrem, Amis and Amiloun
1296 Edward I invades Scotland; Wars of Scottish Independence ensue
early–mid Ywayne and Gawayne

1300s
1307 Edward II
c. 1308–21 Dante, The Divine Comedy
1314 Battle of Bannockburn: Robert Bruce defeats English; his kingship
of Scotland recognised by Treaty of Northampton, 1328
1327 Edward III
c. 1330 Auchinleck manuscript: large miscellany of religious and didactic
poetry and including Sir Orfeo and several other romances
Petrarch, Il Canzioniere (–74)
1337 Hundred Years War begins
c. 1338 Boccaccio, Il Filostrato
1340 (–70) fl. Dafydd ap Gwilym, Welsh poet
(–41) Boccaccio, Il Teseida
1348–50 Black Death widespread; estimated population loss in Britain at Boccaccio, The Decameron (–52)
30–50 per cent
c. 1350 First paper-mill built in England Romances: Tale of Gamelyn, Athelston, William of Palerne, and
others
1362 English declared official language of law courts William Langland, Piers Plowman, A-text (approximate date)
c. 1365– Jean Froissart, Chroniques
1400
c. 1370–87 Geoffrey Chaucer, The Book of the Duchess (1370), The House of
Fame, The Parliament of Fowls, Troilus and Criseyde, The Legend of
Good Women
1377 Richard II accedes, aged 10 Earliest record of York mystery plays
Piers Plowman, B-text (approximate date)
1378 Great Schism (–1417): rival popes in Rome and Avignon
1381 Peasants’ Revolt (or Great Revolt)
1382 Marriage of Richard II to Anne of Bohemia Complete translation of Bible into Middle English
c. 1386– John Gower, Confessio Amantis
90
c. 1387– Geoffrey Chaucer, Canterbury Tales
1400
c. 1390 Piers Plowman, C-text
Alliterative Morte Arthure
(–c. 1425) The Awntyrs off Arthure
1390s Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl, Patience, Cleanness
Vernon manuscript: compilation of earlier vernacular religious works
1399 Richard II deposed and murdered; Henry IV
c. 1400 Sir Gawain and the Carle of Carlisle, Stanzaic Morte Arthur
1413 Henry V
1415 Battle of Agincourt
1418 (–c. 1509) Paston letters
1422 Henry VI accedes (nine months old)
c. 1424 James I of Scotland, Kingis Quair
1428–29 Joan of Arc lifts siege of Orléans in turning point of Hundred
Years War
1431 English burn Joan of Arc as witch in Rouen (–38) John Lydgate, The Fall of Princes
1430s Portuguese navigators explore west coast of Africa; enslaved

Africans first introduced into Portugal (1434)
1445 Osbern Bokenham, Legendys of Hooly Wummen
1450 Jack Cade’s rebellion
1453 Hundred Years War ends; English retain only Calais
Fall of Constantinople and end of eastern Roman empire
1455 First book printed in Europe using movable lead type – the 42-
line Bible, printed in Mainz, Germany, by Johannes Gutenberg
(c. 1400–68)
1455–85 Wars of the Roses
c. 1456 William Dunbar (–c. 1513), Scots poet
1461 Edward IV, House of York, made king
c. 1470 Sir Thomas Malory, Morte Darthur
1470–1 Henry VI briefly reinstated; deposed and murdered 1471; Edward
IV resumes reign
1477 William Caxton (c. 1420–91) introduces printing to England Caxton’s printed works include Reynard the Fox, Canterbury Tales,
Order of Chivalry, The Golden Legend, Morte Darthur
1483 Edward V murdered; Richard III accedes
1485 Battle of Bosworth Field and death of Richard III. Henry VII accedes
1487 Cape of Good Hope rounded by Bartholomew Diaz
1492 Arrival of Columbus in the Caribbean
1497 Vasco da Gama sails round Africa to India (–99), opening a new
trade route to the east
1501 Amerigo Vespucci voyages to the New World (–02); his later
account is basis of name ‘America’ and of its identification as a
separate continent
1508 Michelangelo begins work on the Sistine Chapel Scottish poet Gavin Douglas completes translation of The Aeneid by
Virgil (70–19 bce )
1508 Henry VIII accedes Erasmus, In Praise of Folly
1510 Spain grants royal charter for trade of enslaved Africans to New World
1513 Portuguese explorers begin contact with China Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince
Sir Thomas More, History of Richard III
1516 Erasmus’s Latin translation of New Testament published in Basle More, Utopia (L)
Ludovico Ariosto, Orlando Furioso
1517 Martin Luther, Wittenberg Theses
1519 Invasion of Mexico by Cortés and defeat of Aztec empire (–21)
Magellan begins his voyage around the world (–22)
1525 William Tyndale, New Testament
1533 English Church separates from Rome, Henry VIII is
excommunicated
1534 Act of Supremacy: Henry becomes head of the Church of England Rabelais, Gargantua
1535 Sir Thomas More and Bishop Fisher executed First entire translation of Bible in English published by Miles
Coverdale, building on work of Tyndale
1536 Union of England and Wales
Dissolution of monasteries begins
1541 Henry proclaims himself King of Ireland
1542 James V of Scotland dies, leaving his days-old daughter, Mary, as
Queen of Scots
Early Tudor propaganda argues for Anglo-Scottish union and
invokes concept of an empire of ‘Great Britain’
Inquisition established in Rome
1543 Copernicus, On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres
1545–63 Council of Trent
1547 Death of Henry VIII; Edward VI
1549 Book of Common Prayer (principally by Thomas Cranmer)
1550 Giorgio Vasari, Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors and
Architects
1553 Mary I
1558 Elizabeth I
1559 Act of Uniformity to settle the state of the Church in England John Foxe, Acts and Monuments of the Christian Church (Foxe’s
Book of Martyrs)
William Baldwin, George Ferrers et al., Mirror for Magistrates
1561 Sir Thomas Hoby’s translation of Castiglione’s The Courtier (1528)
Jasper Heywood’s translation of Hercules Furens by Seneca (c. 4
bce –ce 65)
1562 Privateer Sir John Hawkins leads first British participation in the Thomas Norton and Thomas Sackville, Gorboduc first performed
growing transatlantic slave trade between West Africa and the New (printed 1565)
World
1564 William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe born
1567 Arthur Golding’s translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses (c. ce 8)
1569 Mercator’s map of the world published
1576 The Theatre – first purpose-built playhouse in London
1577 Sir Francis Drake begins circumnavigation of the globe (–81) Raphael Holinshed, The Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland
(–78)
1578 Elizabeth I grants royal patent to Sir Humphrey Gilbert allowing John Lyly, Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit
for the colonisation of any ‘remote, heathen and barbarous lands’ John Florio, First Fruites
1579 Sir Thomas North’s translation of Plutarch’s Lives
Edmund Spenser, The Shepherd’s Calendar
1580 Union of Spanish and Portuguese crowns Torquato Tasso, Gerusalemme Liberata
Michel de Montaigne, Essais I–II
John Stow, The Chronicles of England
1581 Thomas Newton (ed.), Seneca: His Tenne Tragedies Translated
into English
1582 Richard Hakluyt, Diverse Voyages
1584 Attempted first colonial settlement in America, at Roanoke Island, Giordano Bruno, Cena de le Ceneri
‘Virginia’ (named by Sir Walter Ralegh after Queen Elizabeth I)
1586 William Warner, Albions England (chronicle enlarged in further
editions until 1612)
1587 Execution of Mary, Queen of Scots Thomas Kyd, The Spanish Tragedy, Marlowe, Tamburlaine I
Pope proclaims crusade against England performed
1588 Spanish Armada defeated
1589 Hakluyt, The Principal Navigations, Voyages and Discoveries of the
English Nation
Marlowe, The Jew of Malta performed
George Puttenham, The Art of English Poesy
1590 Sir Philip Sidney, Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia
Spenser, The Faerie Queene I–III (IV–VI, 1596)
1591 Sidney, Astrophil and Stella
1592 Anon., Arden of Faversham
Samuel Daniel, Delia
Marlowe, Dr Faustus, Shakespeare, Comedy of Errors performed
Mary Sidney, Tragedy of Antony
1593 Shakespeare, Richard III performed
Death of Marlowe
1594 Nine Years’ War in Ireland (–1603) Shakepeare, The Taming of the Shrew performed
1595 Ralegh sails to South America; on return, publishes The Discoverie Daniel, Civil Wars
of the Large, Rich and Beautiful Empire of Guiana (1596) Shakespeare, Richard II and possibly Romeo and Juliet performed
Sidney, An Apology for Poetry (or The Defence of Poesy)
Spenser, Amoretti
1597 New Poor Law Francis Bacon, Essays
Early opera productions in Europe Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part I performed
Dowland, First Book of Songs
1599 Globe theatre built William Scott, The Modell of Poesy
At least 700,000 enslaved Africans in the New World by this time Shakespeare, Henry V, Julius Caesar performed
1600 East India Company chartered Shakespeare, Hamlet written around this time (published 1603)
1603 Death of Elizabeth I. James VI of Scotland accedes to English John Florio, translation of Montaigne’s Essais
throne as James I
1605 The Gunpowder Plot Bacon, The Advancement of Learning
Cervantes, Don Quixote, part 1 (part 2, 1615)
1606 Ben Jonson, Volpone, Shakespeare, King Lear, Cyril Tourneur, The
Revenger’s Tragedy performed
1607 Founding of Jamestown, Virginia, the first permanent British Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher, The Knight of the Burning
settlement in America Pestle
1608 East India Company gains trade concessions in India and first Birth of John Milton
trading stations established by 1613
Plantation of Ulster begins
1609 Shakespeare, Pericles; Sonnets
Spenser, The Faerie Queene (first complete edition)
1610 Henry Hudson explores seas of Canada Jonson, The Alchemist performed
Galileo, The Starry Messenger
1611 Authorised Version of the Bible Chapman, translation of Homer’s Iliad
Shakespeare, The Tempest performed
1612 John Webster, The White Devil performed
1613 Webster, The Duchess of Malfi performed
Elizabeth Cary, Tragedy of Mariam
1614–15 Transportation of convicts begins from Britain to Virginia as Chapman, translation of Homer’s Odyssey
condition of pardon from death sentence
1616 Lectures on the circulation of the blood by William Harvey in Jonson, Works
London Deaths of Shakespeare and Cervantes
1620 Mayflower Pilgrims sail to America Bacon, Novum Organum
1621 John Donne becomes Dean of St Paul’s Cathedral Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy
Mary Wroth, The Countess of Montgomerie’s Urania, Part I
Performances of Philip Massinger, A New Way to Pay Old Debts;
Thomas Middleton, Women Beware Women
1623 Shakespeare, First Folio
1624 Ascendancy of Cardinal Richelieu in France (–42) John Donne, Devotions upon Emergent Occasions
1625 Charles I
1629 Charles dissolves Parliament; period of personal rule lasts till 1640 Lancelot Andrewes, XCVI Sermons
1633 John Ford, ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore
George Herbert, The Temple
Posthumous publication of Donne (d. 1631), Poems
1637 Charles’s attempt to impose prayer book on Scotland leads to Milton, Lycidas
Bishops’ Wars
Descartes, Discours de la méthode
1639–40 English defeated by Scots in two Bishops’ Wars
1640 Parliament recalled; dissolved only in 1660 (the Long Parliament)
1641 Rebellion in Ireland
1642 (–49) Civil War between Royalists and Parliamentarians; first
(inconclusive) military engagement at the Battle of Edgehill
1644 Battle of Marston Moor secures North of England for Parliament Milton, Areopagitica
1645 New Model Army established; defeats main Royalist army at Battle
of Naseby
1646 Milton, Poems
Henry Vaughan, Poems
1649 Trial and execution of Charles I; abolition of monarchy and
England declared a Commonwealth
Descartes, The Passions of the Soul
1650 Defeat of Scots at Battle of Dunbar; Cromwell replaces Fairfax as Andrew Marvell, ‘An Horatian Ode’
Lord General Vaughan, Silex Scintillans (enlarged edn, 1655)
1651 Charles II crowned at Scone but defeated at Battle of Worcester Marvell, ‘Upon Appleton House’
Navigations Act: first in series protecting Britain’s trade monopoly Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan
with its colonies
1653 Cromwell named Lord Protector Margaret Cavendish, Poems and Fancies
Izaak Walton, The Compleat Angler
1656 John Bunyan, Some Gospel-Truths Opened
Sir William D’Avenant, The Siege of Rhodes
James Harrington, The Commonwealth of Oceana
1660 Restoration of Charles II Milton, A Ready and Easy Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth
Royal Society founded John Dryden, Astraea Redux
Theatres reopened
1665 Plague in London
1666 Great Fire of London
1667 Dryden, Annus Mirabilis
Milton, Paradise Lost
1670 Hudson’s Bay Company chartered by Charles II with rights over
huge areas of Canada
1673 Test Act excludes Catholics from public office
Royal Africa Company establishes forts on West African coast,
trading in enslaved Africans and gold
1675 William Wycherely, The Country Wife
1676 George Etheredge, The Man of Mode performed
1677 Aphra Behn, The Rover performed
1678 Popish Plot Bunyan, Pilgrim’s Progress
1679–81 Exclusion Crisis: Bill of 1679, aimed at Charles II’s Roman Catholic Lucy Hutchinson, Order and Disorder (1679)
heir, James, leads to Charles dissolving Parliament three times in Dryden, Absalom and Achitophel (1681)
succession
1684 Behn, A Voyage to the Isle of Love
1685 Charles II dies, James II accedes
Monmouth’s Rebellion
1688 Glorious Revolution; James II replaced by William and Mary Behn, Oroonoko
(–1702)
1689 (–97) King William’s War, principally against France but also Behn, The Widow Ranter performed
against Jacobites in Scotland and Ireland seeking restoration of John Locke, A Letter Concerning Toleration
James II; Jacobites effectively defeated by 1691
Toleration Act modifies laws against Dissenters
Henry Purcell, Dido and Aeneas (opera)
1690 Battle of the Boyne, Ireland: William defeats James II and Catholic Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Two Treatises
Irish of Government
1694 Bank of England established
1698 Jeremy Collier, A Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of
the English Stage
1700 William Congreve, The Way of the World performed
1701 Act of Settlement ensures Protestant (and thus Hanoverian) royal
succession
1702 William dies; Queen Anne accedes
War of the Spanish Succession (–13) involves Britain once more in
wide-ranging war with France and Spain
1704 Battle of Blenheim Daniel Defoe, The Review (–13)
Jonathan Swift, Tale of A Tub, The Battle of the Books
1707 Act of Union with Scotland
1709 The Tatler (–11)
1711 The Spectator (–12)
Alexander Pope, An Essay on Criticism
1713 Treaties of Utrecht between Britain and both France and Spain
1714 Queen Anne dies without male heir; George I accedes Bernard de Mandeville, Fable of the Bees (first published as The
Grumbling Hive, 1705)
1715 James Stuart, Old Pretender, fails in Jacobite uprising from
Scotland
1717 George Friedrich Handel, Water Music
1718 Transportation Act extends transportation to non-capital offences
1719 Defoe, Robinson Crusoe
1720 South Sea Bubble Pope, translation of Homer’s Iliad
Sir Robert Walpole rises to power
1722 Atterbury Plot attempts to restore Jacobites (–23) Defoe, Moll Flanders; A Journal of the Plague Year
Johann Sebastian Bach, Well-Tempered Clavier I
1724 Defoe, Roxana; A Tour through the Whole Island of Great Britain
1726 Swift, Gulliver’s Travels
1727 George II
1728 Pope, The Dunciad
John Gay, Beggar’s Opera performed
1730 Britain now world’s main slave-trading nation: c. 3 million Henry Fielding, Tom Thumb performed
enslaved people will be transported by 1807
1731 George Lillo, The London Merchant performed
1732 William Hogarth, The Harlot’s Progress Covent Garden Theatre opens
1733 Pope, An Essay on Man (–34)
1734 Fielding, Don Quixote in England
1739–48 Wars of Jenkins’ Ear and Austrian Succession, including Anglo-
French conflicts in India
1740 Samuel Richardson, Pamela
1742 Walpole loses majority and resigns Fielding, Joseph Andrews
Handel, Messiah Pope, New Dunciad
1745 Charles Edward Stuart (‘Young Pretender’) leads Jacobite Rebellion
in Scotland
Hogarth, Marriage à la Mode
1746 Battle of Culloden: Jacobites defeated William Collins, Odes
1747 Hogarth, Industry and Idleness Richardson, Clarissa (–48)
1748 Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, ends War of Austrian Succession Tobias Smollett, Roderick Random
1749 Fielding, Tom Jones
1750 Hogarth, Beer Street, Gin Lane Samuel Johnson, The Rambler (–52)
1751 (–72) Denis Diderot et al., Encyclopédie Thomas Gray, Elegy Written in a Country Church Yard
Smollett, Peregrine Pickle
1752 Benjamin Franklin invents lightning conductor Fielding, Amelia; Charlotte
Lennox, The Female Quixote
1753 British Museum opens Richardson, Sir Charles Grandison (–54)
Smollett, The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom
1755 Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language
Smollett, translation of Don Quixote
1756 (–63) Seven Years’ War: Britain allied with Prussia against France, Smollett co-founds The Critical Review (–60)
Austria, Russia and, later, Spain, with fighting in Europe, India and
the Americas; Britain’s victory establishes her naval supremacy and
makes her the leading world power
1757 Battle of Plassey: British victory signals beginning of overall Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas
British rule in India; Robert Clive becomes Governor of Bengal of the Sublime and Beautiful
(–60)
1758 William Battie, Treatise on Madness Johnson, Idler (–60)
1759 Wolfe conquers French Canada (Quebec) for Britain Alexander Gerard, Essay on Taste
Voltaire, Candide Johnson, Rasselas
Laurence Sterne begins publishing Tristram Shandy (–67)
1760 George III Anon., Battle of the Reviews (satirical pamphlet)
Major rebellion of enslaved people in Jamaica Oliver Goldsmith, The Citizen of the World (–61)
Smollett’s The British Magazine begins publication (–67); includes
serial publication of The Life and Adventures of Sir Launcelot
Greaves (–61)
1764 Voltaire, Philosophical Dictionary Horace Walpole, The Castle of Otranto
1765 Stamp Act imposes direct taxation on New World colonies Smollett, Travels in France and Italy
1768–71 Captain Cook charts coasts of New Zealand, eastern Australia Sterne, A Sentimental Journey (1768)
and southern New Guinea; later voyages chart parts of Antarctica
(1772–75) and the Pacific coast of America (1776–79)
1771 First edition of Encyclopaedia Britannica Smollett, The Expedition of Humphrey Clinker
Henry Mackenzie, The Man of Feeling
1772 Lord Mansfield, in the Somerset case, rules that enslaved people are Samuel Foote, The Nabob
free on English soil
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This state of matters is certainly abundantly formidable to France
and to Europe. A great experiment is making as to the practicability
of the working-classes governing themselves and the rest of the state,
without the aid of property or education. France has become a huge
trades-union, the committee of which forms the Provisional
Government, and the decrees of which compose the foundation of
the future government of the republic. Such an experiment is
certainly new in human affairs. No previous example of it is to be
found, at least, in the old world; for it will hardly be said that the
republic of 1793, steeped in blood, engrossed in war, ruled with a rod
of iron by the Committee of Public Salvation, is a precedent to which
the present regeneration of society will refer, in support of the
principles they are now reducing to practice. We fear its state has
been not less justly than graphically described by one of our most
distinguished correspondents, who says—“They are sitting as at a
pantomime; every thing is grand and glorious; France is regenerated,
and all is flourish of trumpets. Meanwhile France is utterly insane—
a vast lunatic asylum without its doctors.”
The present state of Paris, (March 21,) and the germs of social
conflict which are beginning to emerge from amidst the triumph of
the Socialists, may be judged of from the following extracts of the
correspondent of the Morning Chronicle, dated Paris, 18th March:—
“Paris, Friday Evening.—There has been another day of great excitement and
alarm in Paris. Upwards of thirty thousand of the working classes congregated in
the Champs Elysés, and went in procession to the Hotel de Ville to assure the
Government that it might depend upon their assistance against any attempt that
might be made to coerce it, from whatever quarter it came. I need hardly inform
you that this formidable demonstration is intended as a contre coup to the protest
presented by the National Guards yesterday, against M. Ledru Rollin’s decree
dissolving the grenadier and light companies of the National Guards. It is not the
least alarming feature in this affair, that it exhibits an amount of discipline among
the working classes, and a promptitude of execution, which are but too sure
indications both of the power and the readiness of the leaders of the movement to
do mischief. It was only yesterday that the demonstration took place which
displeased the masses; yet, in one short night, the order goes forth, the
arrangements are made, and before ordinary mortals are out of their beds, thirty
thousand of the working classes are marshalled under their leaders, and on their
march to make a demonstration of their force, in presence of the executive
government—a demonstration which, on the present occasion, to be sure, is
favourable to the Government, but which to-morrow may be against it. Who have
the orders proceeded from that drew together these masses? How were they
brought together? The affair is involved in mystery, but there is enough in it to
show an amount of organisation for which the public was not prepared; and which
ought to show all those within its operation that they are sitting upon a barrel of
gunpowder. The fact is—and there is no denying or concealing it—Paris is in the
possession of the clubs, who rule not only it, but the ostensible government. The
National Guards, so powerful only a week ago, are now impotent whether for good
or evil. “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” The National Guards have
quarrelled. The Chasseurs look with jealousy on the compagnies d’élite—the
compagnies d’élite will not fraternise with the Chasseurs. The eighty-four
thousand men, who formed the National Guards before the 24th of February, look
with contempt on the one hundred and fifty thousand new men thrust into their
ranks by M. Ledru Rollin, for election purposes, and call them canaille. The new
levies feel that they cannot compete in wealth with the good company in which
they so unexpectedly find themselves, and they call the old guards aristocrats. Add
to this the discontent of the grenadier and light companies at being deprived of
their distinctive associations and dress, the displeasure of the old officers, who are
about to be deprived of their epaulettes by their new and democratic associates,
and the intriguing of the would-be officers to secure a majority of suffrages in their
own favour, and you may arrive at a judgment of the slight chance there is of the
National Guards of the present day uniting for any one purpose or object. The
result of this is obvious. In case of an outbreak, the National Guards, who were so
useful in re-establishing order on the two days after the abdication of Louis
Philippe, could no longer be depended on. Paris would be in the possession of the
mob, and that mob is under the direction of leaders composed of the worst and the
most unscrupulous of demagogues.”
The same correspondent adds:—
“The financial and commercial crisis which has created such ravages here for the
last week is rapidly extending. I have already given you a distressing list of private
bankers who have been obliged to suspend payment. Another bank, though not
one of any great name, was spoken of yesterday as being on the eve of bankruptcy;
but on inquiry, I find that the bank is still open this morning, although it is
doubtful if it will continue so to the end of the day. I abstain from mentioning the
name. The commercial world is just in as deep distress as the financial world.
Every branch of trade is paralysed. It is useless to attempt to give particular
names or even trades. I shall, therefore, only mention, that in one branch of trade,
which is generally considered one of the richest in France, namely, the metal trade,
there is an almost total suspension of payments. It is not that the traders have not
property, but that they cannot turn it into cash. They have acceptances to meet,
and they have acceptances in hand, but they cannot pay what is due by them, for
they cannot get what others owe. In short, trade is paralysed, for the medium by
which it is ordinarily carried on has disappeared. In other trades precisely the
same circumstances occur; but I only mention this one trade as showing the
position of all others. How long is this to last? No one can say; but one thing
certain is, that no symptom of amelioration has hitherto shown itself.”—Morning
Chronicle, March 20.
As the experiment now making in France is new, and in the

highest degree important, so it is to the last degree to be wished that
it may go on undisturbed. The other powers of Europe cannot be too
much on their guard against it; but no armed intervention should be
attempted, if France retains the pacific attitude she has hitherto held
in regard to other states. The republicans of that country have never
ceased to declare that the first Revolution terminated in internal
bloodshed, military despotism, and foreign subjugation, because it
was not let alone—because the Girondists plunged it into war, in
order to provide a vent for the ardent passions and vehement
aspirations of the unemployed multitudes in that country. Lamartine
admits, in his celebrated circular, that in 1792 “war was a necessity to
France.” He disclaims, as every man of the least knowledge on the
subject must do, the idea that it was provoked by the European
powers, who, it is historically known, were drawn into it when wholly
unprepared, and as unwillingly as a conscientious father of a family
is forced into a duel. Lamartine says the same necessity no longer
exists—that the world has become pacific, and that internal
regeneration, not foreign conquest, is the end of this revolution. We
hope it is so. We are sure it is ardently desired in this country that
pacific relations should not be disturbed with the great republic,
provided she keeps within her own territory, and does not seek to
assuage her thirst at foreign fountains. By all means let the long
wished-for experiment be made. Let it be seen how society can get on
without the direction of property and knowledge. Let it be seen into
what sort of state the doctrines of the Socialists and St Simonians,
the dictates of the trades-unions, the clamour of the working masses,
will speedily reduce society. Theirs be the glory and the honour if the
experiment succeeds—theirs the disgrace and the obloquy if it fails.
Let all other nations stand aloof, and witness the great experiment
—“a clear stage and no favour” be the universal maxim. But let every
other people abstain from imitating the example, till it is seen how
the experiment has succeeded in the great parent republic. It will be
time enough to follow its footsteps when experience has proved it is
conducive to human happiness and social stability.
But while, as ardently as any Socialist in existence, we deprecate
the commencement of hostilities by any European power, and
earnestly desire to see the great social experiment now making in
France brought to a pacific issue, in order that its practicability and
expedience may for ever be determined among men, yet it is evident
that things may take a different issue in that country. It is possible—
though God forbid we should say it is probable—that the great
republic may, from internal suffering, be driven to foreign
aggression. This, on Lamartine’s own admission, has happened once:
it may happen twice. France has four hundred thousand regular
troops under arms; and every man capable of bearing a musket is to
be forthwith enrolled in the National Guard. Twenty-five thousand of
that body have already been taken into regular and permanent pay,
at thirty sous, or about fifteenpence, a-day, and sent to the frontier.
It is impossible to say how soon this immense and excited mass, with
arms in their hands, and little food in their stomachs, may drive the
government, as in 1792 they did that of the Girondists, on
Lamartine’s admission, into foreign warfare. It behoves Europe to be
on its guard. Fortunately the course which its governments should
pursue in such an event lies clear and open. They have only to
resume the Treaty of Chaumont, concluded in 1813, to curb the
ambition of the great military republic of which Napoleon was the
head. Let that treaty be secretly but immediately renewed as a purely
defensive league. Let no one think of attacking France; but the
moment that France invades any other power, let the four great
powers forthwith bring a hundred and fifty thousand each into the
field. Let not the wretched mistake be again committed, of the others
looking tamely on when one is assailed—“et dum singuli pugnant,
universi vincuntur.”[11] The moment the French cross the Rhine or
the Alps, the states of Europe must stand side by side as they did at
Leipsic and Waterloo, if they would avoid another long period of
oppression by the conquering republicans.
Nearly sixty years have elapsed since Mr Burke observed—“The
age of chivalry is gone; that of sophists, economists, and calculators
has succeeded, and the glory of Europe is extinguished for ever.
Never more shall we behold that generous loyalty to rank and sex—
that proud submission, that dignified obedience, that subordination
of the heart, which kept alive, even in servitude itself, the spirit of an
exalted freedom. The unbought grace of life—the cheap defence of
nations, the nurse of manly sentiments—is gone. It is gone, that
sensibility of principle, that chastity of honour, which felt a stain like
a wound, which inspired courage while it mitigated ferocity, which
ennobled whatever it touched, and under which vice itself lost half of
its evil, by losing all its grossness.”[12] What a commentary on these
well-known and long-admired words have recent events afforded! It
is indeed gone, the loyalty to rank and sex—the proud submission,
the dignified obedience, the subordination of the heart, which
formerly characterised and adorned the states of modern Europe.
With more courage than the German Empress, the Duchess of
Orleans fronted the revolutionary mob in the Chamber of Deputies;
but no swords leapt from their scabbards in the Chamber of Deputies
when her noble appeal was made to the loyalty of France—no
generous hearts found vent in the words, “Moriamur pro rege nostro,
Maria Theresa!” It could no longer be said—
“Fair Austria spread her mournful charms—
The Queen, the beauty, roused the world to arms.”
The infuriated rabble pointed their muskets at the royal heroine,

and the few loyal members of the assembly were glad to purchase her
safety by removing her from the disgraceful scene. Not a shot was
thereafter fired; not a show even of resistance to the plebeian
usurpation was made. An army of four hundred thousand men, five
hundred thousand National Guards, thirty-four millions of men, in a
moment forgot their loyalty, broke their oaths, and surrendered their
country to the worst of tyrannies, the tyranny of a multitude of
tyrants.
“The unbought grace of life,” says Mr Burke, “the cheap defence of
nations, is at an end.” What a commentary has the triumph of the
Barricades, the government of Louis Philippe, afforded on these
words! M. Garnier Pages, in his Financial Report, has unfolded the
state of the French finances, the confusion and disastrous state of
which he is fain to ascribe to the prodigal expenditure and
unbounded corruption of Louis Philippe. He tells us, and we doubt
not with truth, that during the seventeen years of his government,
the expenditure has been raised from 900,000,000 francs,
(£36,000,000,) to 1700,000,000 francs, (£68,000,000;) that the
debt has been increased during that period by £64,000,000; and
that the nation was running, under his direction, headlong into the
gulf of national bankruptcy. He observes, with a sigh, how moderate
in comparison, how cheap in expenditure, and pacific in conduct,
was the government of Charles X., which never brought its
expenditure up to £40,000,000. It is all true—it is what we predicted
eighteen years ago would be the inevitable result of a democratic
revolt; it is the consummation we invariably predicted of the
transports following the fall of Charles X. The republicans, now so
loud in reprobation of the expenditure of the Citizen King, forget that
his throne was of their own making; that he was a successful
democratic usurper; that his power was established to the sound of
the shouts of the republicans in all Europe, amidst the smoke of the
Barricades. A usurping government is necessarily and invariably
more costly than a legitimate one; because, having lost the loyalty of
the heart, it has no foundation to rest on, but the terrors of the
senses, or the seductions of interest. It was for precisely the same
reason that William III. in ten years raised the expenditure of Great
Britain from £1,800,000 a year, to £6,000,000; and that, in the first
twenty years of the English government subsequent to the
Revolution, the national debt had increased from £600,000 to
£54,000,000. When the moral and cheap bond of loyalty is broken,
government has no resource but an appeal to the passions or
interests of the people. The Convention tried an appeal to their
republican passions, and they brought on the Reign of Terror.
Napoleon tried an appeal to their military passions, and he brought
on the subjugation of France by Europe. Louis Philippe, as the only
remaining resource, appealed to their selfish interests, and he
induced the revolution of 1848. Mankind cannot escape from the
gentle influence of moral obligations, but to fall under the reaction of
conquest, the debasement of corruption, or the government of force.
But all these governments, say the republicans, fell, because they
departed from the principles of the Revolution, and because they
became corrupted by power as soon as they had tasted its sweets. But
even supposing this were true,—supposing that Mirabeau, Danton,
Robespierre, Napoleon, and Louis Philippe were all overthrown, not
because they took the only method left open to them to preserve the
support of the senators, but because they departed from the
principles of the Revolution; do the republicans not see that the very
announcement of that fact is the most decisive condemnation of their
system of government? Do they expect to find liberals more eloquent
than Mirabeau, republicans more energetic than Danton, socialists
more ardent than Robespierre, generals more capable than
Napoleon, citizen kings more astute than Louis Philippe? Republican
power must be committed to some one. Mankind cannot exist an
hour without a government: the first act of the infuriated and
victorious rabble in the Chamber of Deputies was to name a
Provisional one. But if experience has proved that intellect the most
powerful, patriotism the most ardent, genius the most transcendent,
penetration the most piercing, experience the most extensive, are
invariably shipwrecked amidst the temptations and the shoals of
newly acquired republican power, do they not see that it is not a form
of government adapted for the weakness of humanity; and that if the
leaders of revolution are not impelled to destruction by an external
and overbearing necessity, they are infallibly seduced into it by the
passions which, amidst the novelty of newly acquired power, arise in
their own breasts? In either case, a revolution government must
terminate in its own destruction,—in private sufferings and public
disasters; and so it will be with the government of M. Lamartine and
that of the new National Assembly, as it has been with all those
which have preceded it.
“Deus patiens,” says St Augustin, “quia æternus.”[13]—What an
awful commentary on this magnificent text have recent events
afforded! Eighteen years ago Louis Philippe forgot his loyalty and
broke his oath; the first prince of the blood elevated himself to power
by successful treason; he adopted, if he did not make, a revolution.
He sent his lawful monarch into exile; he prevented the placing the
crown on the head of his grandson; he for ever severed France from
its lawful sovereigns. What has been the result of his usurpation?
Where are now his enduring projects, his family alliances, his vast
army, his consolidated power? During seventeen years he laboured
with indefatigable industry and great ability to establish his newly
acquired authority, and secure, by the confirmation of his own
power, the perpetual exile of the lawful sovereign of France. Loud
and long was the applause at first bestowed by the liberal party in
Europe on the usurpation; great was the triumph of the bourgeoisie
in every state at seeing a lawful monarch overturned by a well-
concerted urban revolt, and the National converted into a Prætorian
Guard, which could dispose of crowns at pleasure. But meanwhile
the justice of Heaven neither slumbered nor slept. The means taken
by Louis Philippe to consolidate his power, and which were in truth
the only ones that remained at his disposal, consummated his ruin.
His steady adherence to peace dissatisfied the ardent spirits which
sought for war; his firm internal government disconcerted the
republicans; his vast internal expenditure drew after it a serious
embarrassment of finance. He could not appeal to the loyal feelings
of the generous, for he was a usurper; he could not rest on the
support of the multitude, for they would have driven the state to
ruin; he could not rally the army round his throne, for they would
have impelled him into war. Thus he could rest only on the selfish
interests; and great was the skill with which he worked on that
powerful principle in human affairs. But a government which stands
on selfish feelings alone is a castle built on sand; the first wind of
adversity levels it with the dust. Napoleon’s throne was founded on
this principle, for he sacrificed to warlike selfishness; Louis Philippe
on the same, for he sacrificed to pacific selfishness. Both have
undergone the stern but just law of retribution. An eye for an eye, a
tooth for a tooth, has been meted out to both. To Napoleon, who had
sent so many foreign princes into banishment, and subverted so
many gallant states, a defeat in the field, a melancholy exile, and
unbefriended death, in a foreign land; to Louis Philippe, who had
dethroned his lawful sovereign, and carried the standard of treason
into the halls of the Tuilleries, the fate which he allotted to Charles
X., that of being expelled with still greater ignominy from the same
halls, being compelled to eat the bread of the stranger, and see his
dynasty driven from their usurped throne amidst the derision and
contempt of mankind.
“If absolute power,” says M. De Tocqueville, “shall re-establish
itself in whatever hands, in any of the democratic states of Europe, I
have no doubt it will assume a form unknown to our fathers. When
the great families and the spirit of clanship prevailed, the individual
who had to contend with tyranny never found himself alone—he was
supported by his clients, his relations, his friends. But when the
estates are divided, and races confounded, where shall we find the
spirit of family? What form will remain in the influences of habit
among a people changing perpetually, where every act of tyranny will
find a precedent in previous disorders, where every crime can be
justified by an example; where nothing exists of sufficient antiquity
to render its destruction an object of dread, and nothing can be
figured so new that men are afraid to engage in it? What resistance
would manners afford which have already received so many shocks?
What would public opinion do, when twenty persons do not exist
bound together by any common tie; when you can no more meet with
a man, a family, a body corporate, or a class of society, which could
represent or act upon that opinion; where each citizen is equally
poor, equally impotent, equally isolated, and can only oppose his
individual weakness to the organised strength of the Central
Government? To figure any thing equal TO THE DESPOTISM which
would then be established amongst us, we would require to recur not
to our own annals; we would be forced to go back to those frightful
periods of tyranny, when, manners being corrupted, old recollections
effaced, habits destroyed, opinions wavering, liberty deprived of its
asylum under the laws, men made a sport of the people, and princes
wore out the clemency of heaven rather than the patience of their
subjects. They are blind indeed who look for democratic equality in
the monarchy of Henry IV. and Louis XIV.”[14] What a commentary
on this terrible prophecy have recent events supplied! The
revolutionists say, that France is entering the last phase of the
revolution.—It is true, it is entering it; but it is the last phase of
punishment to which it is blindly hurrying. The sins of the fathers are
about to be visited on the third generation. To talk of real freedom,
stable institutions, protected industry, social happiness, in such a
country, is out of the question. With their own hands, in the first
great convulsion, they destroyed all the bulwarks of freedom in the
land, and nothing remains to them, after the madness of socialism
has run its course, but the equality of despotism. They have thrown
off the laws of God and man, and Providence will leave their
punishment to their own hands. “The Romans,” says Gibbon,
“aspired to be equal: they were levelled by the equality of Asiatic
bondage.”
Amidst so many mournful subjects of contemplation, there is one
consideration which forces itself upon the view, of great importance
in the present condition of this country. This revolution in France
being a revolt of labour against capital, its first principle is a deadly
hostility to the principle of free-trade. The recent barbarous
expulsion of the English labourers from France, several thousands in
number, after having enriched the country by their labour, and
taught it by their example, proves what sympathy foreign industry
meets with from the great and fraternising republic. The
confiscation of their hard-won earnings by the cessation of the
savings’ banks to pay more than a tenth in cash, shows what they
have to expect from the justice and solvency of its government. With
the rise of the communist and socialist party in France to power,
whose abomination is capital, whose idol is labour, it may with
certainty be predicted that the sternest and most unbending
prohibition of British goods will immediately be adopted by the
great philanthropic and fraternising republic. All other countries
which follow in any degree the example of the great parent republic,
by the popularising of their institutions, will, from the influence of
the labour party, do the same. America already draws nineteen
million dollars, or nearly £4,000,000 sterling, from its imports, the
greater part of which is a direct tax levied on the industry of this
country. Reciprocity, always one-sided, will ere long be absolutely
isolated. We shall be,
“Penitus divisos orbe Britannos,”
even more by our policy than our situation.

What chance there is of free-trade doctrines being adopted by the
present socialist and free-trade government in France, may be
judged of by the following quotation from the Constitutionnel:—
“Is not, in fact, the consumer, such as the free-traders represent him to us, a
strange creation? He is, as he has been wittily described, a fantastic being—a
monster who has a mouth and a stomach to consume produce, but who has neither
legs to move nor arms to work. We do not fear that the operative classes will suffer
themselves to be seduced by those doctrines. We are aware that they have
constantly rejected them through the organs of the press more especially charged
with the defence of their interests; but it behoves them likewise that the
Provisional Government should remain on its guard against principles which
would be still more disastrous under existing circumstances. M. Bethmont, the
minister of commerce, has declared, in a letter addressed by him to the association
for the defence of national labour, that he would never grant facilities of which the
consequences would be calculated to injure our manufacturers. We see by this
declaration that the dispositions of the Provisional Government are good. The very
inquiry which is now being held to devise means to ameliorate the moral and
material condition of the operatives, ought to confirm the government in the
necessity of maintaining the system which protects industry. Let us inquire what
the consequence would be, in fact, if we were so imprudent as to suffer foreign
produce to enter France free of duty. Political economy teaches us that wages find
their balance in consequence of the competition existing between nations; but they
find their equilibrium by falling, and not by rising. If that were not the case, there
would be no possibility of maintaining the struggle. Now, if we opened our ports,
this cruel necessity would become the more imperious for us, as, being placed
opposite to England in conditions of inferiority, greater in respect to capital, to the
means of transport, and to the price of matters of the first necessity, we could not
redeem those disadvantages except by a reduction of wages. This, in fact, would be
the annihilation of the operative.”—Constitutionnel, March 16, 1848.
This is the inevitable result of republican and socialist triumph in

the neighbouring kingdom, and the impulse given to liberal
institutions, an inlet thereby opened to manufacturing jealousy all
over the world. Debarred thus from all possibility of reciprocal
advantages; shut out for ever from the smallest benefit in return, is it
expedient for Great Britain to continue any longer her concessions to
foreign industry, or incur the blasting imputation of a suicidal policy
towards her own inhabitants in favour of ungrateful and selfish
foreigners, who meet concessions with prohibition, and industrial
teaching with savage expulsion from the instructed territory.
“No revolution,” says Madame de Staël, “can succeed in any
country, unless it is headed by a portion of the higher, and the
majority of the middle classes.” Recent events have afforded another
to the many confirmations which history affords of this important
observation. Had the National Guard of Paris stood firm, the troops
of the line would never have wavered; the government would not
have been intimidated; a socialist revolution would have been
averted; public credit preserved; the savings’ bank, the place of
deposit of the poor—the public funds, the investment of the middle
classes—saved from destruction. When we contemplate the dreadful
monetary crisis which has been brought on in France by the
revolution; when we behold the bank of France suspending
payments, and all the chief banks of the metropolis rendered
bankrupt by the shock; when we behold wealth in ship-loads flying
from its menaced shores, and destitution in crowds stalking through
its crowded and idle streets, we are struck with horror, and
impressed with a deeper sense of thankfulness at the good sense and
patriotic spirit of the middle classes in this country, which has so
quickly crushed the efforts of the seditious to involve us in similar
calamities. “The unbought loyalty of men,—the cheap defence of
nations,”—still, thank God! subsists amongst us. The poison of
infidelity has not destroyed the moral bonds of society—the rolling-
stone of revolution has not crushed the institutions of freedom
amongst us. There are hearts to love their country—arms to defend
their Queen—not less among our civil than our military defenders.
The pillage of Glasgow on the first outbreak of the disturbances
there, their speedy suppression, by the energy of the inhabitants, has
not been lost on the empire. It is not in vain that twenty thousand
constables came forward to be enrolled in one day in Glasgow, and
eleven thousand in Manchester. We see what we have to expect from
the seditious; they see what they have to expect from the middle
classes of society, and the whole virtuous part of the lower. With such
dispositions in both, Great Britain may be exposed to local disorder
or momentary alarm, but it can never be seriously endangered, or
undergo that worst of horrors—a social revolution. Nor will she, with
such dispositions in her people, be less prepared to assert the ancient
glory of her arms, should circumstances render that alternative
necessary. She has no internal reforms to make that she cannot
achieve peaceably, by the means which her constitution affords. Her
giant strength slumbers, not sleeps. Our ships of war, in the noble
words of Mr Canning, “how soon one of those stupendous masses,
now reposing on their shadows in perfect stillness,—how soon, upon
any call of patriotism, or of necessity, it would assume the likeness of
an animated thing, instinct with life and motion—how soon it would
ruffle, as it were, its swelling plumage—how quickly it would put
forth all its beauty and its bravery, collect its scattered elements of
strength, and awaken its dormant thunder!”—how soon would the
flag of Waterloo again be unfurled to the breeze!
A GERMAN DITTY.
The following is a very loose imitation of a popular German air.

While life’s early friends still surround us,
Yet another bright hour let us pass,
And wake the old rafters around us
With the song and the circling glass.
For it cannot thus long hold together

Here under the changeable moon;
To bloom for a time, then to wither,
Is the lot of all, later or soon.
Then here’s to the many good fellows

Who before us have tippled and laugh’d;
Be they under the turf or the billows,
To them let this goblet be quaff’d.
That if, after us, others as merry

Shall keep up as joyous a train,
One bumper of port or of sherry
To us in our turn they may drain—
As they keep up the charter of joyance,

As by us was maintain’d in our day;
Not to drown dull care and annoyance,
Not ignobly to moisten our clay;—
But to raise an extempore shrine,

Where Momus, revisiting earth,
May find humour and whim yet divine,
And the glorious spirit of mirth.
For ’twas not we were reckless of duty,

Or the sterner requirements of life;
’Twas not we were mindless of beauty,
Or are now, of home, children, and wife;
But ’tis,—that the wandering hours

Have a singular frolicsome way
Of scattering the fairest of flowers
O’er moments of fellowship gay;
When fancy leads off to a measure

That youth might mistake for its own,
As its wont were to seek after pleasure,
With feeling and wit for its tone;
And so vivid and bright the ideal

Her fairy-light shows us the while,
That wisdom asks nothing more real,
And genius applauds with a smile.
Mac.
TWO SONNETS.
BY GEORGE HUNTLY GORDON.

MONT BLANC.
AN IMAGINARY SONNET, BY SIR WALTER SCOTT, WHILE
COMPOSING HIS SWISS STORY, ANNE OF GEIERSTEIN.
[When Captain Sherwill and Dr Edmund Clark ascended to the summit of Mont
Blanc, they were much surprised to observe the greater apparent distance and
feebler splendour of the moon and stars. “The cloudless canopy of heaven was
of a very dark blue, but with a slight reddishness in the tinge, so as rather to
resemble a beautiful deep violet than indigo.... The vault of heaven appeared
prodigiously high and distant. After two days’ march upward, the blue expanse
seemed to have receded from us much faster than we had climbed towards
it.... Perhaps there are few phenomena (adds Dr Clark,) so calculated to take
an impressive hold of the imagination.”]
When bold Emprise, by thrilling hopes and fears

Alternate sway’d, hath each dread peril pass’d,
And Mont Blanc’s snow-bound summit reach’d at last;
Remoter shine th’ eternal starry spheres,
More distant walks the moon ‘mid darkest blue,
Heaven’s cloudless dome dilates, and higher seems;
And way-worn pilgrim sees, with wond’ring view,
Each star decline, and pale its wonted beams!
So, when Ambition hath from life’s low vale
Our footsteps lured, when, danger’s path defied,
We’ve gain’d at length, with fortune’s fav’ring gale,
The “promised land,”—the pinnacle of pride,—
The phantom Bliss thus mocks our cheated eyes,
For, as we mount, the dear delusion flies!
TO ——.
Meekness, Sincerity, and Candour, seem
Enshrined in that sweet smile, and calm, clear brow;
Nor less within thy blue eye’s witching beam,
Affection warm, and Sympathy with wo;
Goodness and Grace ineffable illume
Thy mien:—when Music melts thy thrilling tone,
How could my heart its magic pow’r disown?
Thy siren strains oft snatch me from the gloom,
The dream-like forms, the anguish, and turmoil,
That haunt the Past. Alas! too soon again—
As on yon stormy strand the seas recoil,
Some weed sweeps back into its wave-worn den[15]—
Wild Mem’ry’s spells resume their wonted might,
And sternly shroud me from thy world of light!
MY ROUTE INTO CANADA.
NO. II.
Lake Champlain was long known to the Dutch, and through them
to the English, as the Lake of Corlaer. It seems that one Corlaer was
for a long time the great man of a little Dutch settlement on the
Mohawk, where for many years he swayed the civic sword so potently
and with such terror to evil-doers among the Indians, that they
adopted his name into their language to signify a white governor.
This doughty Dutchman, therefore, left the title to his successors,
and the Corlaers went through their decline and fall with as much
dignity, in a small way, as history ascribes to the Pharaohs and the
Cæsars. Like the founders of other dynasties, however, the original
Van Corlaer came to a remarkable and tragic end; and as this
deplorable event took place on the Lake, now known by the name of
Champlain, the Dutch stubbornly regarded their own hero as having
the best right to name it. For a time it seemed likely that fortune
would decide for the Dutch; but, with a fickleness for which the flirt
is proverbial, she suddenly declared for the French claim; and time
having ratified the award, the name of Corlaer is no more heard
among mortals, except when some one of antiquarian tastes, like
myself, discovers, with a meditative sigh, that it once could start a
ghost as soon as Cæsar, and come very near being “writ in water,”
which, strange to say, would have rendered it immortal.
It seems that in those days there was, somewhere in the lake, a
remarkable rock which the Mohawks regarded as the dome of a
submarine palace, in which dwelt with his mermaids a wicked old
Indian enchanter, who ruled over Boreas and Euroclydon. The
superstition was quite coincident in its particulars with the more
classical and familiar one which is served up in the story of Æneas:
but this mischievous king of the winds had the merit of being easily
propitiated; and the Indians, as they timidly passed his stronghold,
never failed to send down to him the tributary peace offering of a
pipe, an arrow, or any thing else, save their bottles of fire-water, of
which the old fellow was dexterously cheated. The doughty Van
Corlaer, undertaking a voyage to the north, was duly informed of
these facts; but he swore “by stone and bone” that he would not pay
the tribute, or ask any one’s permission to navigate the lake. I am
sorry to add that he would not be argued out of his rash and
inconsiderate vow. Tradition relates that, as he approached the rock,
his mariners showed signs of fear, which appeared so puerile and
idle to the enlarged soul of the hero, that he on the contrary steered
close to the fearful citadel, and, shamefully exposing his person,
made an unseemly gesture towards the abode of the Indian Æolus,
and added some Dutch formula of defiance. It is almost needless to
relate that the wrath of his ventose majesty was greatly excited. He
scorned, indeed, to make a tempest about it; but despatching several
angry little squalls after the insolent admiral, they bored him fore
and aft, and beset him from so many quarters at once, in a narrow
gorge of the lake, that, in short, he was effectually swamped, and
thus made a warning example to all succeeding Van Corlaers. His
name, as I said, was for a while bequeathed to the lake; but even this
poor recompense for a disaster so terrible has proved as evanescent
as the bubbles, in which the last sigh of the unfortunate Dutchman
came up from the caves to which, like the great Kempenfelt, he went
down in a moment.
The lake, therefore, retains its Gallic appellation, and preserves the
name and memory of Samuel de Champlain, a servant of Henry IV.,
and justly surnamed the father of La Nouvelle France. The
expedition in which it first received his name was a romantic one,
and so well illustrates what I have already said of the border feuds of
the seventeenth century, that I must be excused for relating its story.
Champlain had come down to the shores of the lake with a party of
Adirondacks, and was advancing through the forest towards the
lands of the Iroquois, when suddenly they came in sight of a strong
party of that nation, who showed no disposition to decline an
encounter. On the contrary, setting up their warwhoop, they
advanced pell-mell to the attack. The Frenchmen, betaking
themselves to an ambuscade, made ready to receive them with their
fusils; while their savage allies awaited the foe with their usual
coolness and contempt of danger. The Iroquois were the more
numerous, and, elated by their apparent superiority, came down with
the sweeping violence of a whirlwind. The Adirondacks seemed in
their eyes as chaff; and with howls and hatchets they were just
pouncing upon their prey, when the blazing fusils of Champlain and
his comrades laid the foremost of the Iroquois warriors in the dust.
The remainder fled into the wilderness with the most frantic outcries
of astonishment and despair. It was the first volley of fire-arms that
ever reached the ear or the heart of an Iroquois—the first that ever
startled the echoes of that lake, which was so soon destined to
tremble beneath the bellowing thunders of navies. They were
defeated they knew not how; but they retired to the depths of the
forest, muttering the deadliest vows of revenge. It so happened that
another collision of the same kind occurred soon after on the Saurel
—a little river, much broken by rapids, through which the waters of
the lake make their way to the sea. There was among the Algonquins
a bold and dashing chief whose name was Pisquaret. He had made an
incursion against the Iroquois, and was laden with the scalps which
he had taken from an Indian village which he surprised at night and
completely destroyed. As he was navigating the rapids of the Saurel
with his Adirondacks and several Frenchmen, he was surprised by a
powerful armament of Iroquois, who immediately bore down upon
him, with great advantage from the current. The treacherous
Algonquins feigned to give themselves up for lost, and, setting up the
death-song of the Adirondacks, appeared to await their inevitable
fate. The Frenchmen, throwing themselves flat in the batteaux, and
resting the muzzles of their carbines upon the gunnels, coolly
calculated the effects of the coming discharge; but Pisquaret and his
warriors raised their voices in chanting the victories of their tribe,
inflaming the Iroquois by vaunts of injuries which they had done
them, and defying them in return not to spare any torture in seeing
how the Algonquins could die. The exasperated foe was just pealing
the war-cry, when the deadly blaze of the carbines changed their
exultation in a moment to howls of agony and dismay. But these
were tricks which could not be repeated; and, long after, the empire
of the Grande Monarque paid dearly for these frolics in the unpruned
wilderness. Those who are fond of tracing the greatest political

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Studying English Literature in Context

Critical Readings Paul Poplawski

Malaysian Literature in English A Critical Companion

Old English Literature A Guide to Criticism with

Studying in English Strategies for Success in Higher

Contemporary Readings in Marxism A Critical

Multilingual Development: English in a Global Context

Old Masters in New Interpretations Readings in

Sources for Studying the Holocaust A Guide 1st Edition

The Reception of English Literature in Germany Lawrence

Caroline Franklin, Swansea University

‘Studying English Literature in Context helps to ease students’ tran-

Naomi McAreavey, University College Dublin

‘Driven by the conviction that texts are fruitfully understood within

Ronan McDonald, The University of Melbourne

‘Studying English Literature in Context is a superb collection of

Elaine Treharne, Stanford University

‘An impeccable selection of wide-ranging but sharply focused texts in

Stephen Kern, Ohio State University

Ranging from early medieval times to the present, this diverse

Paul Poplawski taught at the University of Wales and the University

Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge.

List of Figures page xii

Part I Medieval English, 500–1500

1 Finding The Dream of the Rood in Old English Literature 11

2 The Translator as Author: The Case of Geoffrey Chaucer’s

3 Arthurian Romance as a Window on to Medieval Life: The Case

Part II The Renaissance, 1485–1660

4 The Renaissance in England: A Meeting Point 67

5 ‘Mr Spencer’s Moral Invention’: The Global Horizons of

6 Arden of Faversham 101

7 ‘A Little Touch of Harry in the Night’: Mysteries of

Part III The Restoration and Eighteenth Century, 1660–1780

9 Periodising in Context: The Case of the Restoration and

10 Truth-Telling and the Representation of the Surinam ‘Indians’

11 ‘The Pamphlet on the Table’: The Life and Adventures of

Part IV The Romantic Period, 1780–1832

12 ‘Transported into Asiatic Scenes’: Romanticism and the Orient 203

13 Historical Fiction in the Romantic Period: Jane Porter,

14 Jane Austen and Her Publishers: Northanger Abbey

15 ‘O for a Life of Sensations’ or ‘the Internal and External Parts’:

Part V The Victorian Age, 1832–1901

16 Poetry and Science in the Victorian Period 271

17 ‘In Characters of Tint Indelible’: Life Writing and Legacy

18 Money, Narrative and Representation from Dickens to Gissing 305

19 Reading and Remediating Nineteenth-Century

20 Public Places, Private Spaces in Fin-de-Siècle British

Part VI The Twentieth Century, 1901–1939

21 D. H. Lawrence’s Women in Love: An Anthropological Reading 357

22 The Epigraph for T. S. Eliot’s Marina: Classical Tradition and

23 Passing as a Male Critic: Mary Beton’s Coming of Age in

Part VII The Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries, 1939–2020

24 An Ecocritical Reading of the Poetry of Ted Hughes 407

25 Women Publishers in the Twenty-First Century: Assessing

26 Crisis and Community in Contemporary British Theatre 439

Part VIII Postcolonial Literature in English

28 Bessie Head’s Feminism of Everyday Life 477

29 The Gender Politics of Grace Nichols: Joy and Resistance 493

30 ‘The All-purpose Quote’: Salman Rushdie’s Metacontextuality 508

31 Postcolonial Literature and the World, 2017–2019:

Appendix A: Glossary of Critical Terms 545

Appendix C: Essays Listed by Genre and Theme 573

1.1 The Ruthwell Cross, Ruthwell, Dumfries and Galloway, c.