Lexington Books
Pages: 232
•
Trim: 6½ x 9
978-1-4985-7660-4 • Hardback • November 2018 • $117.00 • (£90.00)
978-1-4985-7661-1 • eBook • November 2018 • $111.00 • (£85.00)
Marinos Pourgouris is assistant professor of literary theory and modern Greek studies at the University of Cyprus.
Chapter 1: Empire of Intimacy
Chapter 2: Advertisements: “Cyprus! Cyprus! Cyprus!”
Chapter 3: St. Leger Algernon Herbert and The Times of London
Chapter 4: Archibald Forbes and The Daily News
Chapter 5: John Augustus O’Shea and The London Evening Standard
Chapter 6: Edward Henry Vizetelly and The Glasgow Herald
Chapter 7: Samuel Pasfield Oliver and The Illustrated London News
Chapter 8: Hepworth Dixon and the Provincial Press
Chapter 9: Letters to the Editor: J. L. Haddan’s Pioneer Railway and V. L. Cameron’s Journey to Cyprus
This is an exciting and uncannily pertinent exploration of a heavily entangled corner in the Eastern Mediterranean — Cyprus in and around 1878 — toward the formation of “the colonialist imaginary,” a phrase Marinos Pourgouris deploys with great sophistication as it testifies to complex, indeed divided, valuations of colonial possessions in the context of Philhellenism and Orientalism. Exactingly attentive to scholarly, literary, and journalistic writing, delving into a wealth of archives, Pourgouris beautifully shows the constellation of forces that energized the British public, seized (and distracted) its attention, seduced its imagination, and captured its consumerist fantasies. An urgent compendium of lessons yet learned.
— Gil Anidjar, Professor in the Departments of Religion, the Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies (MESAAS), and the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society (ICLS), Columbia University
The political and diplomatic story of the British occupation of Cyprus in 1878 has often been told, but in this book Marinos Pourgouris vividly and freshly describes it in more human, everyday and broadly sociological terms. His fascinating account of the journalists who covered the event provides not only a hugely interesting picture of the Cyprus they encountered, but of the cultural complexity that shaped their responses and fed back into British society. This book shows how from the start Cyprus occupied a special and intimate place in the metropolitan imagination, with consequences that were longlasting and indeed are still current today.
— Robert Holland, King's College London
Characterized by the British claim to the ancient Greek inheritance and by an administrative apparatus convinced of its ability to modernize and civilize, the "Cyprus frenzy" bore singular clues to the mutually reinforcing narratives and images that circulated among British politicians, military personnel, journalists, academics, travelers, and ordinary citizens alike. In this copiously documented and lucidly presented account, Marinos Pourgouris opens our eyes to the extensive discourse networks through which "empire" became an intimate part of the British national imagination.
— Rey Chow, author of A Face Drawn in Sand: Humanistic Inquiry and Foucault in the Present