Essential Scots and the Idea of Unionism in Anglo-Scottish Literature, 16031832

This ambitious book offers an alert and lively examination, not of Anglo-Scottish writing as a whole, but of the idea and representation of unionism in a series of specific authors or case-studies.... Even those who disagree with its larger claims about narrative, or with its particular interpretations, will find this a book stuffed with good and provocative quotes and ideas. * Studies In Scottish Literature * Rivka Swensons Essential Scots offers a welcome development on the notions of conciliation, inclusive feeling, and constellations as a means of national cultural analysis. * Eighteenth-Century Fiction * Swenson carries the reader into new critical territory through a series of deft readings. The meaning of Scottishness understood as a kind of kernel or essence, however empty or malleable changes over time as it does different work in the hands of different authors and at different historical moments. A sophisticated, thought-provoking addition. Indeed, Essential Scots serves notice that this sub-field has clearly come of age. -- Evan Gottlieb, Associate Professor of English, Oregon State University; author of <i>Romantic Globalism: British Literature and Modern World Order, 1750-1830</i>

Rivka Swenson is associate professor of English at Virginia Commonwealth University.

Acknowledgments List of Illustrations List of Abbreviations Introduction Part I: Essential Scottishness and the Form of Original Anglo-Scottish Discontent One: Writing Anglo-Scottish Unionism and its Discontents in 1603 and 1707: Francis Bacon, Daniel Defoe, and English Anxieties of Narration Two: Writing Reunion, Rewriting Union for the Atomic Scot: Tobias Smolletts Traveling Types after the 45 and Seven Years War Three: Writing Revolution as Essential Recovery: Samuel Johnsons Return to Scotland after Ossian Part II: Unionism and the Challenge of the Individual in Early Nineteenth-Century Scottish Writing Four: Individual Concerns, the Mock-Gothic, and Marriage Trouble: Anglo-Scottish Self-Difference in Susan Ferriers Laboratory Five: Describing the Subnational Hinge in 1822: Robert Mudie and the Aesthetic Politics of the Synthetic British Text Coda: Walter Scott and the Legacy of Chosen Scottishness Bibliography Index About the Author