Contemporary postcolonial studies represent a controversial area of debate. This collection seeks a more pragmatic approach to the subject, taking into account its historical, social and political realities, rather than ignoring a consideration of material conditions. The contributors look at the oppositional power held and exercised by anti-colonial movements, a neglected topic; address the literary strategies devised by metropolitan writers to contain the insecurities of empire, given that unrest and opposition were integral to British imperialism; contest the charges of nativism and...

The specially commissioned essays in Victorian Women Poets, written by scholars from Britain and North America, offer revisionary readings of canonical poets and bring into focus re-discovered writers. The volume both engages critically with the political and aesthetic agenda behind the project of recovery, and also presents a pioneering approach to reading poets who have slipped out of the canon. The work of Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Christina Rossetti is re-assessed and given surprising and innovative literary, political and intellectual contexts that will change the way we interpret...