In this study of George Eliot's fiction, textual attempts to imagine a coherent and unified national past are seen as producing a contradictory vision of Englishness. It is a historiographical national identity, constructed in the image of predominant, and conflicting, trends in the Victorian writing of history. The inherent uncertainty caused by the shift between different perceptions of English history leads, in the later fiction, to an abandonment of contemporaneous grand narratives. The consequence is a history that anticipates a more modern, radical philosophy of history.
NEIL MCCAW is a Lecturer in English Studies at King Alfred's College, Winchester where he teaches courses in nineteenth-century literature and culture. He has published articles and chapters on Victorian masculinity, literary Irishness , and nineteenth-century historical writing.
Acknowledgements Introduction: 'Those Far-Reaching Visions of the Past' George Eliot and the (Meta)Narrativity of History Imagining the National Past A Natural History of English Life A Carlylean Counter-Paradigm Theodicy and History Imagining the National Present Unwritten Landscapes: Imagining the National Future Conclusion: Beyond Victorian Historiography Bibliography Index
