James Watt is a former Director of the University of York's interdisciplinary Centre for Eighteenth Century Studies. His previous publications include Contesting the Gothic: Fiction, Genre, and Cultural Conflict, 1764-1832 (Cambridge, 1999), and an edition of Clara Reeve's The Old English Baron (2003). He has published numerous essays and articles in edited collections and in journals including Eighteenth Century Life and The Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation.

• Introduction: Britain, Empire, and 'openness' to the East; 1. 'Those islanders': British orientalisms and the Seven Years' War; 2. 'Indian details': fictions of British India, 1774–1789; 3. 'All Asia is covered in prisons': oriental despotism and British liberty in an age of revolutions; 4. 'In love with the Gopia': Sir William Jones and his contemporaries; 5. 'Imperial dotage' and poetic ornament in romantic orientalist verse narrative; 6. Cockney translation: Leigh Hunt and Charles Lamb's eastern imaginings; 7. 'It is otherwise in Asia': 'character' and improvement in picaresque fiction; Conclusion: British orientalisms, Empire, and improvement; Bibliography; Index.

'A bibliography of primary and secondary sources and an index round out this densely informative literary history.' W. L. Svitavsky, Choice