Date: Sun, 16 Jul 1995 01:55:20 EDT
Subject: Dickens & Empire


Thanks to Ernest Stromberg, Fragano Ledgister, Suresht Bald, Paul Brophy, 
and especially Alpana Knippling for helpful tips on Dickens & Empire.  Yes, 
Ernest, i have found Said's _Culture & Imperialism_ enormously helpful in 
reading the traces of empire and the mapping of social space in Victorian 
novels that are not _about_ empire in any simple or obvious way.  

Fragano, I have the reference to Semmel's book, but haven't yet laid hands 
on the book itself.  What I have read is a biography of Governor Eyre that 
was informative, though largely an apologia for him.  Australians:  an 
interesting detail:  Eyre first went out to Australia as a young man, where 
he made a name for himself as a heroic explorer and survivor (evidently he 
was the inspiration for Patrick White's _Voss_) and even as a advocate for 
the aborigines.  Later he went out to Jamaica as a civil servant, became 
governor, and put down an insurrection with horrific brutality--as a result 
of which he was charged with murder (and defended by Dickens and Carlyle, 
among other prominent Victorians . . . ).

No, I don't read Hindi, alas, but I'll certainly try to seek out 
translations of Premchand's work, Suresht.  I found G. V. Desani's _All 
about H. Hatterr_ in the school library--it looks fascinating, Alpana.  My 
sense is that it will be relatively easy to trace a Dickensian comic 
tradition through such writers as V. S. Naipaul, Rushdie, and the South 
African Modikwe Dikobe, as well as Desani, but I would like to go beyond 
this.

I know Dickens is still read in the settler colonies (including the U.S.).  
Listmembers who grew up elsewhere (Asia, Africa, the Caribbean . . . ), I'd 
be interested to know if _you_ read Dickens in school . . . ?

Thanks, Gill

Gill Gane     English Department, UMass-Boston     gane-AT-umbsky.cc.umb.edu


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