Introduction: Fictional Cartographies

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the book’s study. This volume covers the novel in English in countries other than Britain and the United States over four and a half centuries. At the centre of this period is the British Empire, not merely in its political and territorial manifestations, but as a literary empire, processing and reconfiguring the English literary canon through the medium of the English language. The period encompasses satire, fantasy, migration narratives, the literature of dispersal and return, of the growth of empire, and of its lapse, that brings new modes of literary affiliation. Moreover, it sees, throughout the empire, the establishment of new communities of writers and readers, publishers, and booksellers.