Cultural concerns about gender and empire converge in striking and unexpected ways in two popular novel forms of late-Victorian Great Britain. In the 1880s and 1890s, feminist New Woman fiction and colonial adventure stories competed for the sympathies of their readers. While one form questions a system that proclaims male superiority and the right to dominate others, the second celebrates British male victories over savage landscapes, animals, and people. Despite their differences, the author argues, one subgenre is the twin star of the other: Each revolves around the other, affected by the...

Michael Field, the poetic identity created by Katharine Bradley (1846-1914) and her niece Edith Cooper (1862-1913), ceaselessly experimented with forms of identity and forms of literary expression.The Forms of Michael Fieldargues that their modes of self-creation are analogous to their poetic creations, and that exploring them in tandem is the best way to understand Michael Field’s cultural and literary importance. Michael Field deploys a different form in each volume of their lyric poetry: translations of Sappho, ekphrasis, songs, sonnets, and devotional verse. They also appropriate...