"Reading this fine book is a delight and an education. The prose is powerful and concise, the reading wide yet well digested, and the thesis as intelligent as it is adventuous." John Gillies, Modern Philology

• 1. Introduction: productions of Empire; 2. Thinking territorially: Spenser, Ireland, and the English nation-state; 3. Contracting geography from the country house to the Colony; 4. Overseeing paradise: Milton, Behn, and Rowlandson; 5. The import and export of Colonial Space: the islands of Defoe and Swift; 6. 1745 and the systematising of the Yahoo; 7. Conclusion: the politics of space.

"Reading this fine book is a delight and an education. The prose is powerful and concise, the reading wide yet well digested, and the thesis as intelligent as it is adventuous." John Gillies, Modern Philology

• 1. Introduction: productions of Empire; 2. Thinking territorially: Spenser, Ireland, and the English nation-state; 3. Contracting geography from the country house to the Colony; 4. Overseeing paradise: Milton, Behn, and Rowlandson; 5. The import and export of Colonial Space: the islands of Defoe and Swift; 6. 1745 and the systematising of the Yahoo; 7. Conclusion: the politics of space.

"Reading this fine book is a delight and an education. The prose is powerful and concise, the reading wide yet well digested, and the thesis as intelligent as it is adventuous." John Gillies, Modern Philology

• 1. Introduction: productions of Empire; 2. Thinking territorially: Spenser, Ireland, and the English nation-state; 3. Contracting geography from the country house to the Colony; 4. Overseeing paradise: Milton, Behn, and Rowlandson; 5. The import and export of Colonial Space: the islands of Defoe and Swift; 6. 1745 and the systematising of the Yahoo; 7. Conclusion: the politics of space.