A History of Black and Asian Writing in Britain
A History of Black and Asian Writing in Britain
£30.00
GBPNow updated and available in paperback, this is the first extended study of black and Asian writing in Britain over the last 250 years. Beginning with authors who arrived as immigrants or slaves in the mid-eighteenth century, Innes includes a detailed discussion of works that were often enormously popular in their own time but are almost unknown to contemporary readers. Innes's fascinating study reveals a history of vigorous and fertile interaction between black, Asian and white intellectuals and communities, and an enormously rich and varied literary culture which was already in existence before the post-war efflorescence of black and Asian writing. Utilising a wealth of archival material, Innes examines their work as part of an acceptance of and challenge to British cultural and ideological discourses. This volume offers a rich historical background for understanding contemporary British multicultural society and culture and will be of interest to literary and cultural historians.
- An updated edition of the first overview of black and Asian writing in Britain
- Covers three centuries of literary production up to the present day
- Author is an internationally renowned scholar of postcolonial writing
Reviews & endorsements
'… a pioneering history of black and Asian writing in Britain … what makes this book a significant contribution to the continuing debate on the identity of Britain is its meticulous reconstruction of black and Asian writing in the country over a period of almost five hundred years … There is no doubt that as a literary history this book fills a gaping hole in our understanding of black and Asian writing in Britain.' Simon Gikandi
'Innes offers detailed, critically informed readings of several black and Asian writers in Britain … Both in terms of the historical terrain it covers and the writings it references and/or analyzes, Innes's study is likely to prove an invaluable resource and reference tool for people writing about and/or teaching anglophone (including mainstream white British) cultural and literary production in the colonial metropole.' Anuradha Dingwaney Needham, Research in African Literatures
'It is hard to fault C. L. Innes for the wealth of primary and secondary research and scholarship on which she expertly draws or for her analytic observations on the complexity of the experience and attitudes of Black and Asian British writers.' Steven Barfield
'With the panorama of writing it unfolds and its excellent scholarship, this study is essential reading. It belongs in every university library.' Zeitschrift für Anglistik unk Amerikanistik
Product details
August 2008Paperback
9780521719681
340 pages
228 × 152 × 21 mm
0.55kg
5 b/w illus.
Available
Table of Contents
- Chronological table of historical and literary events
- List of illustrations
- Introduction
- Interchapter: first encounters
- 1. Eighteenth-century letters and narratives: Ignatius Sancho, Olaudah Equiano, and Dean Mahomed
- 2. Speaking truth for freedom and justice: Mary Prince and Robert Wedderburn
- Interchapter: the imperial century
- 3. Querying race, gender and genre: nineteenth-century narratives of escape
- 4. Travellers and reformers: Mary Seacole and B. M. Malabari
- 5. Connecting cultures: Cornelia and Alice Sorabji
- Interchapter: ending empire
- 6. Duse Mohamed Ali, anti-imperial journals, and black and Asian publishing
- 7. Subaltern voices and the construction of a global culture
- 8. Epilogue
- Notes to chapters
- Notes on writers
- Bibliography.
