Suvir Kaul is A. M. Rosenthal Professor and Chair of English at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of Poems of Nation, Anthems of Empire: English Verse in the Long Eighteenth Century (Charlottesville: The University Press of Virginia, 2000; Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2001), and of Thomas Gray and Literary Authority: Ideology and Poetics in Eighteenth-Century England (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1992; Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992). He also writes on South Asia and postcolonial theory and has edited The Partitions of Memory: the afterlife of the division of India (New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2001; London: C. Hurst, 2001; Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002) and co-edited (with Ania Loomba, Antoinette Burton, Matti Bunzl and Jed Esty), Postcolonial Studies and Beyond (Durham, Duke University Press, 2005).

Kaul succeeds well in his project to situate literary production within the context of the international mercantile anxieties of nation and economy in the long eighteenth century... This is a very valuable and erudite work, short in length but rich in scope and content, beneficial for scholars, graduate students, and undergraduates alike, that serves as a good compendium of sources for further reading and research. The focus on the extratextual mercantile and colonialist phenomena can help dissuade readers from celebrating the meanings of literary texts and encourage them, instead, to reflect upon the forces, not readily evident, that produce those meanings.

• Timeline; Introduction: Towards a Postcolonial History of Eighteenth-century English Literature; Postcolonial Studies and Empire today; Nation-formation and empire in the eighteenth century; Territory, trade routes, war and "Great Britain"; Print and Public Culture; Literary Creativity, Literary Criticism, Postcolonial Criticism; Plan of the Book; Chapter 1: Theaters of empire; Davenant, the revival of performance, and the thematics of empire; Aphra Behn, colonial self-making, and the uncertain consolations of romance; Civil tragedy, commercial humanism, and colonial consciousness; Chapter 2: The expanding frontiers of prose; Yariko and Inkle and the staging of polite culture; Crusoe the merchant-adventurer-and Friday; Chapter 3: Imaginative writing, intellectual history, and the horizons of British literary culture; The Spectator, print culture, and the circulation of inter-national value; The languages of national difference: becoming Roderick Random; Luxury, Commercial Society, Enlightenment historiography; Chapter 4: Perspectives from Elsewhere; Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and her Turkish Embassy Letters; Johnson's Rasselas: philosophy in an "oriental" key; Phillis Wheatley: literacy, poetry, and slavery ; Ukawsaw Gronniosaw: writing in another voice; Conclusion: Gazing into the Future; Literary transport: to India and the South Seas; Bibliography; Further Reading; Index.

Suvir Kaul is A. M. Rosenthal Professor and Chair of English at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of Poems of Nation, Anthems of Empire: English Verse in the Long Eighteenth Century (Charlottesville: The University Press of Virginia, 2000; Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2001), and of Thomas Gray and Literary Authority: Ideology and Poetics in Eighteenth-Century England (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1992; Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992). He also writes on South Asia and postcolonial theory and has edited The Partitions of Memory: the afterlife of the division of India (New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2001; London: C. Hurst, 2001; Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002) and co-edited (with Ania Loomba, Antoinette Burton, Matti Bunzl and Jed Esty), Postcolonial Studies and Beyond (Durham, Duke University Press, 2005).

Kaul succeeds well in his project to situate literary production within the context of the international mercantile anxieties of nation and economy in the long eighteenth century... This is a very valuable and erudite work, short in length but rich in scope and content, beneficial for scholars, graduate students, and undergraduates alike, that serves as a good compendium of sources for further reading and research. The focus on the extratextual mercantile and colonialist phenomena can help dissuade readers from celebrating the meanings of literary texts and encourage them, instead, to reflect upon the forces, not readily evident, that produce those meanings.

• Timeline; Introduction: Towards a Postcolonial History of Eighteenth-century English Literature; Postcolonial Studies and Empire today; Nation-formation and empire in the eighteenth century; Territory, trade routes, war and "Great Britain"; Print and Public Culture; Literary Creativity, Literary Criticism, Postcolonial Criticism; Plan of the Book; Chapter 1: Theaters of empire; Davenant, the revival of performance, and the thematics of empire; Aphra Behn, colonial self-making, and the uncertain consolations of romance; Civil tragedy, commercial humanism, and colonial consciousness; Chapter 2: The expanding frontiers of prose; Yariko and Inkle and the staging of polite culture; Crusoe the merchant-adventurer-and Friday; Chapter 3: Imaginative writing, intellectual history, and the horizons of British literary culture; The Spectator, print culture, and the circulation of inter-national value; The languages of national difference: becoming Roderick Random; Luxury, Commercial Society, Enlightenment historiography; Chapter 4: Perspectives from Elsewhere; Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and her Turkish Embassy Letters; Johnson's Rasselas: philosophy in an "oriental" key; Phillis Wheatley: literacy, poetry, and slavery ; Ukawsaw Gronniosaw: writing in another voice; Conclusion: Gazing into the Future; Literary transport: to India and the South Seas; Bibliography; Further Reading; Index.

Suvir Kaul is A. M. Rosenthal Professor and Chair of English at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of Poems of Nation, Anthems of Empire: English Verse in the Long Eighteenth Century (Charlottesville: The University Press of Virginia, 2000; Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2001), and of Thomas Gray and Literary Authority: Ideology and Poetics in Eighteenth-Century England (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1992; Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992). He also writes on South Asia and postcolonial theory and has edited The Partitions of Memory: the afterlife of the division of India (New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2001; London: C. Hurst, 2001; Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002) and co-edited (with Ania Loomba, Antoinette Burton, Matti Bunzl and Jed Esty), Postcolonial Studies and Beyond (Durham, Duke University Press, 2005).

Kaul succeeds well in his project to situate literary production within the context of the international mercantile anxieties of nation and economy in the long eighteenth century... This is a very valuable and erudite work, short in length but rich in scope and content, beneficial for scholars, graduate students, and undergraduates alike, that serves as a good compendium of sources for further reading and research. The focus on the extratextual mercantile and colonialist phenomena can help dissuade readers from celebrating the meanings of literary texts and encourage them, instead, to reflect upon the forces, not readily evident, that produce those meanings.

• Timeline; Introduction: Towards a Postcolonial History of Eighteenth-century English Literature; Postcolonial Studies and Empire today; Nation-formation and empire in the eighteenth century; Territory, trade routes, war and "Great Britain"; Print and Public Culture; Literary Creativity, Literary Criticism, Postcolonial Criticism; Plan of the Book; Chapter 1: Theaters of empire; Davenant, the revival of performance, and the thematics of empire; Aphra Behn, colonial self-making, and the uncertain consolations of romance; Civil tragedy, commercial humanism, and colonial consciousness; Chapter 2: The expanding frontiers of prose; Yariko and Inkle and the staging of polite culture; Crusoe the merchant-adventurer-and Friday; Chapter 3: Imaginative writing, intellectual history, and the horizons of British literary culture; The Spectator, print culture, and the circulation of inter-national value; The languages of national difference: becoming Roderick Random; Luxury, Commercial Society, Enlightenment historiography; Chapter 4: Perspectives from Elsewhere; Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and her Turkish Embassy Letters; Johnson's Rasselas: philosophy in an "oriental" key; Phillis Wheatley: literacy, poetry, and slavery ; Ukawsaw Gronniosaw: writing in another voice; Conclusion: Gazing into the Future; Literary transport: to India and the South Seas; Bibliography; Further Reading; Index.