Stepmother Tongue

JOHN SKINNER has taught at various universities in Sweden, Finland, Italy and the United States and has published three books: Tell-Tale Stories: Essays in Narrative Poetics, The Fictions of Anita Brookner and Constructions of Smollett. His research interests are the new anglophone literatures and eighteenth-century British fiction.

'It is high time that someone knowledgeable attempted to give new literatures in English a meaningful theoretical context based as much on place as on language ... a book of this sort would be useful to students and scholars and would no doubt enlarge their conception of the scope of the field today.' - Professor Bernth Lindfors, University of Texas 'This comprehensive survey can be safely recommended to students looking for interesting novelists, or for those already reading interesting novelists who might like to think about their contexts. John Skinner's galloping concision is always accessible...It is a spirited attempt to avoid recent arguments about cultural hegemonies and historically tenacious racial politics, which have long determined the discussions of literature in English otherwise categorised as post-colonial or Commonwealth.' - Ruth Morse, Times Literary Supplement

• Foreword Introduction PART 1: NEW LITERATURES IN OLD WORLDS Asia Africa The South Pacific PART 2: NEW LITERATURE IN NEW WORLDS Afro-America The Caribbean PART 3: OLD LITERATURE IN NEW WORLDS Australia and New Zealand South Africa and Canada PART 4: OLD LITERATURE IN OLD WORLDS The British Isles North America Extroduction Afterword Works Discussed Index.