"Gypsies and the British Imagination, 1807-1930 is a highly cogent and persuasive account of an important and largely neglected topic in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century literary and cultural studies. Nord adds fresh insights into canonical authors such as Wordsworth, Scott, Arnold, and Eliot, and perhaps most usefully, brings into sharp view important but often neglected figures (George Borrow) and institutions (the Gypsy Lore Society). The readings of primary texts are unusually nuanced and complex, and Britain's reactions to the Gypsies, along with questions of gender and of race in general, are handled with tact, sensitivity, and rare intelligence."
-Michael Ragussis, Georgetown University, author of Figures of Conversion: "The Jewish Question" & English National Identity
"Deborah Nord's work will add considerably to our knowledge and interpretation of the 'other' within British culture of the nineteenth and early twentieth century. Gypsies and the British Imagination is finely written and manages to do what all the best writing of this kind should-it simultaneously sends one back to familiar texts with fresh understanding, and relates them to some important wider questions."
-Kate Flint, Rutgers University, author of The Victorians and the Visual Imagination
Gypsies were both idealized and reviled by Victorian and early-twentieth-century Britons. They were regarded as an integral part of British society but, at the same time, separate from it. Associated with primitive desires, lawlessness, cunning, and sexual excess, Gypsies were also privileged as objects of antiquarian, literary, and anthropological interest. In this work, the first to fully explore the British obsession with Gypsies, Deborah Epstein Nord traces the varied representations of Gypsies in the works of Walter Scott, William Wordsworth, George Eliot, Arthur Conan Doyle, D. H. Lawrence, and others. Nord also recovers the fascinating histories of nomadic writer George Borrow, the Gypsy Lore Society, and other neglected figures and institutions.
Projecting onto Gypsies what they most feared and desired, writers and artists drew on Gypsy characters and plots to redefine and reconstruct cultural and racial difference, national and personal identity, and the individual's relationship to social and sexual orthodoxies.
Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Children of Hagar
1. "A Mingled Race": Walter Scott's Gypsies
2. Vagrant and Poet: The Gypsy and the "Strange Disease of Modern Life"
3. In the Beginning Was the Word: George Borrow's Romany Picaresque
4. "Marks of Race": The Impossible Gypsy in George Eliot
5. "The Last Romance": Scholarship and Nostalgia in the Gypsy Lore Society
6. The Phantom Gypsy: Invisibility, Writing, and History
Notes
Bibliography
Index
-Michael Ragussis, Georgetown University, author of Figures of Conversion: "The Jewish Question" & English National Identity
"Deborah Nord's work will add considerably to our knowledge and interpretation of the 'other' within British culture of the nineteenth and early twentieth century. Gypsies and the British Imagination is finely written and manages to do what all the best writing of this kind should-it simultaneously sends one back to familiar texts with fresh understanding, and relates them to some important wider questions."
-Kate Flint, Rutgers University, author of The Victorians and the Visual Imagination
Gypsies were both idealized and reviled by Victorian and early-twentieth-century Britons. They were regarded as an integral part of British society but, at the same time, separate from it. Associated with primitive desires, lawlessness, cunning, and sexual excess, Gypsies were also privileged as objects of antiquarian, literary, and anthropological interest. In this work, the first to fully explore the British obsession with Gypsies, Deborah Epstein Nord traces the varied representations of Gypsies in the works of Walter Scott, William Wordsworth, George Eliot, Arthur Conan Doyle, D. H. Lawrence, and others. Nord also recovers the fascinating histories of nomadic writer George Borrow, the Gypsy Lore Society, and other neglected figures and institutions.
Projecting onto Gypsies what they most feared and desired, writers and artists drew on Gypsy characters and plots to redefine and reconstruct cultural and racial difference, national and personal identity, and the individual's relationship to social and sexual orthodoxies.
Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Children of Hagar
1. "A Mingled Race": Walter Scott's Gypsies
2. Vagrant and Poet: The Gypsy and the "Strange Disease of Modern Life"
3. In the Beginning Was the Word: George Borrow's Romany Picaresque
4. "Marks of Race": The Impossible Gypsy in George Eliot
5. "The Last Romance": Scholarship and Nostalgia in the Gypsy Lore Society
6. The Phantom Gypsy: Invisibility, Writing, and History
Notes
Bibliography
Index