Melodramatic Imperial Writing From The Sepoy Rebellion To Cecil Rhodes

"Melodrama, as an aesthetic, has long been criticized for its reliance on improbable situations and overwhelming emotion. These very aspects, however, made it a useful and appealing literary mode for British imperial propagandists in the late nineteenth century. Though stage melodrama may have been declining in prominence, the melodramatic style influenced many late-Victorian genres outside of the theater-for example, imperialist ballads, detective novels, travel narratives, and romances-and developed a complicated relationship with British imperial discourse. Melodramatic Imperial Writing: From the Sepoy Rebellion to Cecil Rhodes locates melodrama within a new and considerably more complicated history of British imperialism: beyond its use in constructing imperialist fantasies or supporting unjust policies, the melodramatic style also enabled writers to upset narratives of British imperial destiny or racial superiority. This book examines works by both canonical and lesser-known authors writing after the Sepoy Rebellion, including Wilkie Collins, Marie Corelli, Charles Dickens, H. Rider Haggard, W. E. Henley, Rudyard Kipling, Olive Schreiner, and Robert Louis Stevenson, and encompasses representations of British imperialism from India, to South Africa and the South Seas"--