Adrienne Munich is Professor of English, Art, Cultural Studies, and Gender Studies, Emerita, at Stony Brook University and author and editor of numerous books, including Queen Victoria's Secrets.

“Empire of Diamonds offers a sweeping, vivid, richly detailed, at times dazzling account of the diamond as a figure for empire in nineteenth-century British writing. Munich’s book is more than a sequence of sparkling interpretive rhapsodies: it has a genuine argument to make about the imaginary life of the Victorian empire.The imperishable beauty of diamonds, so this gorgeous book argues, was a vector for imperial rapaciousness from Britain to India to South Africa; diamonds’ distracting glamor could never quite conceal the exploitation, violence, racial animosity, and death that have always accompanied their unearthing and circulation. Stylishly written, deeply learned, and richly interdisciplinary, this book provides the necessary settings (historical, geopolitical, economic, cultural, religious, and psychoanalytic) to illuminate every facet of the most fabulous and gruesome of diamond tales, from Victorian times to the present.”

Adrienne Munich is Professor of English, Art, Cultural Studies, and Gender Studies, Emerita, at Stony Brook University and author and editor of numerous books, including Queen Victoria's Secrets.

“Empire of Diamonds offers a sweeping, vivid, richly detailed, at times dazzling account of the diamond as a figure for empire in nineteenth-century British writing. Munich’s book is more than a sequence of sparkling interpretive rhapsodies: it has a genuine argument to make about the imaginary life of the Victorian empire.The imperishable beauty of diamonds, so this gorgeous book argues, was a vector for imperial rapaciousness from Britain to India to South Africa; diamonds’ distracting glamor could never quite conceal the exploitation, violence, racial animosity, and death that have always accompanied their unearthing and circulation. Stylishly written, deeply learned, and richly interdisciplinary, this book provides the necessary settings (historical, geopolitical, economic, cultural, religious, and psychoanalytic) to illuminate every facet of the most fabulous and gruesome of diamond tales, from Victorian times to the present.”

Adrienne Munich is Professor of English, Art, Cultural Studies, and Gender Studies, Emerita, at Stony Brook University and author and editor of numerous books, including Queen Victoria's Secrets.

“Empire of Diamonds offers a sweeping, vivid, richly detailed, at times dazzling account of the diamond as a figure for empire in nineteenth-century British writing. Munich’s book is more than a sequence of sparkling interpretive rhapsodies: it has a genuine argument to make about the imaginary life of the Victorian empire.The imperishable beauty of diamonds, so this gorgeous book argues, was a vector for imperial rapaciousness from Britain to India to South Africa; diamonds’ distracting glamor could never quite conceal the exploitation, violence, racial animosity, and death that have always accompanied their unearthing and circulation. Stylishly written, deeply learned, and richly interdisciplinary, this book provides the necessary settings (historical, geopolitical, economic, cultural, religious, and psychoanalytic) to illuminate every facet of the most fabulous and gruesome of diamond tales, from Victorian times to the present.”