Mathilde Blind, the Highland Clearances, and the "Trappings of Nationality" in the British Isles

This essay strives to bring critical attention to the formal and aesthetic attributes of the often-overlooked epic poem, The Heather on Fire (1886), by fin-de-siècle poet Mathilde Blind. Blind's writing, like her persona, challenged boundaries of style and genre to bring seemingly disparate styles together. She combined her knowledge of conventional forms, her fascination with old-world imagery, and her politically charged and locally grounded cosmopolitan perspective to bridge old and new worlds. This essay examines the ways in which Blind applies the forms of traditionally British genres in her 1886 epic, The Heather on Fire, to depict the violence and injustice of the nineteenth-century Highland Clearances. Blind's manipulation of form in this hybrid poem addresses the British Scottish question in the late-Victorian period by documenting the Highland crofters' loss and grief and by advocating for crofter land rights and inclusion under modern British law.