White Man’s Burdens: An Anthology of British Poetry of the Empire Hardcover – January 1, 1996 9780859894920

For the first time, The White Man’s Burdens offers a cross-section of British poetry in which the Empire was the burden of the song. The material, much of it previously uncollected, is drawn from a broad cultural spectrum that includes narrative poetry, heroic verse, patriotic ballads, music hall monologues, and poems from Punch. A substantial Introduction sets the poems in the context of the economic, political, and ideological development of British imperial rule, and headnotes historicize the poems themselves, which are presented chronologically – from George Chapman’s ‘De Guiana: Carmen Epicum’ of 1596 to Fred D’Aguiar’s ‘At the Grave of the Unknown African’ of 1993.

The result is a poetic summary of the changing attitudes of an imperialist nation to its own imperialism, attitudes which range from jingoism and racism, through religious idealism and liberal anxiety, to outright disgust at the whole enterprise.