'Tim Carens' Outlandish English Subjects in the Victorian Domestic Novel makes a commanding contribution to the burgeoning study of the reflux of imperialism in metropolitan England. He brilliantly discovers how the ideologies of an imperial civilizing mission variously manifest themselves as they return to invest personal relations at home. His sense of the precariousness of such home missions, founded as they were on the unstable binaries of the empire itself, arms a discussion of major texts from the entire nineteenth century with important new insights - and with penetrating wit before the spectacle of one culture's attempt to set itself above and beyond general humanity.' - Professor John Maynard, New York University, USA
