Dr Tim Fulford is Professor in the Department of English and Media Studies at Nottingham Trent University. He is the author of Landscape, Liberty and Authority: Poetry, Criticism and Politics from Thomson to Wordsworth (Cambridge, 1996) and Romanticism and Masculinity (1999) and co-editor with Peter J. Kitson of Romanticism and Colonialism (Cambridge, 1998). Peter J. Kitson is Professor in the Department of English at Dundee University. He is co-editor with Timothy Fulford of Romanticism and Colonialism (Cambridge, 1998). Debbie Lee is Professor of English at Washington State University. She is the author of Slavery and the Romantic Imagination (2002) and co-editor with Peter J. Kitson of Abolition, and Emancipation: Writings in the British Romantic Period (2000).

• List of illustrations; Acknowledgements; A note on the text; Frequently cited texts; Introduction: bodies of knowledge; Part I. Exploration, Science and Literature: 1. Sir Joseph Banks and his networks; 2. Tahiti in London; London in Tahiti: tools of power; 3. Indian flowers and Romantic Orientalism; 4. Mental travellers: Banks, African exploration and the Romantic imagination; 5. Banks, Bligh and the breadfruit: slave plantations, tropical islands and the rhetoric of Romanticism; 6. Exploration, headhunting and race theory: the skull beneath the skin; 7. Theories of terrestrial magnetism and the search for the poles; Part II. British Science and Literature in the Context of Empire: 8. 'Man electrified man': Romantic revolution and the legacy of Benjamin Franklin; 9. The beast within: vaccination, Romanticism and the Jenneration of disease; 10. Britain's little black boys and the technologies of benevolence; Conclusion; Notes; Index.

'An important requirement for the establishment of knowledge is knowledge of the establishment. the authors of this well-researched and fascinating book have illustrated this truth more amply than they concede.' MLR