Description
Book SynopsisAlthough by twentieth-century standards the number of victims was small, the Victorian public saw 'the Indian Mutiny' of 1857-59 as an epochal event. This book seeks to discover why. It offers a view of this episode - and of Victorian imperialist culture more generally - at odds with the standard formulations of postcolonial scholarship.
Trade Review"War of No Pity is a vital and vitally important work of literary, cultural, and historical criticism, one that no student of the Victorian period can afford not to know."--Stephen Arata, Victorian Studies "Christopher Herbert has done postcolonialists, Victorianists, and indeed anyone interested in modern violence a remarkable service in reading a vast amount of Mutiny literature and returning to tell the tale of it. War of No Pity explicates the kind of violence that can ensue between any us and any them, given the recurrent conditions of empire, in all of its forms and fictions."--Elaine Freedgood, Criticism "A most impressive study of colonial relations and India is Christopher Herbert's War of No Pity: The Indian Mutiny and Victorian Trauma that, in great and significant detail, does away with as many presuppositions as possible."--Ann C. Colley, Studies in English Literature "[T]his is an excellent book, admirable in its scope and depth, thoroughly enjoyable, and very thought provoking."--Michael J. Turner, Journal of British Studies "Students of Britain's nineteenth-century empire owe Herbert a considerable debt for the sheer volume of Mutiny references, both popular and highbrow, he has assembled here... Herbert has given us new and compelling reasons to return to the Mutiny as a watershed, if not the watershed, moment in the making of Victorian imperial culture."--Antoinette Burton, Journal of Modern History "It should be required reading for every scholar of Victorian culture and above all for students of imperialism and the Empire."--Thomas William Heyck, European Legacy "[T]his is an exemplary exercise in the subtle fusing of historical and literary methods, and Herbert is to be congratulated on producing a genuinely original and thought provoking book."--Maria Misra, The Historian
Table of ContentsList of Illustrations xi Acknowledgments xiii INTRODUCTION: Jingoism, Warmongering, Racism 1 CHAPTER ONE: Diabolical Possession and the National Conscience 19 CHAPTER TWO: Three Parables of Violence 58 CHAPTER THREE: The Culture of Retribution: Capital Punishment, Maurice Dering, Flotsam 99 CHAPTER FOUR: The Mutiny in Victorian Historiography 134 CHAPTER FIVE: The Infernal Kingdom of A Tale of Two Cities 205 CHAPTER SIX: Lady Audley's Secret: The Mutiny, the Gothic, and the Feminine 239 EPILOGUE: Fiction Fair and Foul: Novels of the Mutiny 273 Notes 289 Works Cited 307 Index 317
