Poems of Nation, Anthems of Empire: English Verse in the Long Eighteenth Century. By Suvir Kaul. Charlottesville and London: University Press of Virginia, 2000. Pp. x + 337. $55 (cloth), $19.50 (paper).

For the last several decades, eighteenth-century English verse has suffered from considerable neglect. Consigned to the dustbin of history, the long poems in particular are rarely if ever read by nonspecialists, seldom taught, and only infrequently taken up in critical discourse. Novels of the period have received all the glory; few now question their central role in the transformations wrought by an emerging modernity, from shaping new forms of subjectivity to articulating British cultural identities. In his magisterial survey of poems of nation and empire, Suvir Kaul makes a compelling argument for revaluing their significance. Eighteenth-century English verse, he argues, illustrates not only the cultural negotiations of the geopolitics of the period but also the force and limits of cultural productions reflecting on and promoting imperial nationalism in general. In the face of his detailed and careful readings of these poems, one cannot deny the truth of Kaul's claims-however reluctant one might be to turn one's attention to these "loose baggy monsters."

Janet Sorensen
Indiana University