Sounding Imperial: Poetic Voice and the Politics of Empire, 1730–1820

• Acknowledgments
• Chapter
• Johns Hopkins University Press
• pp. ix-xiv
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Acknowledgments

Once, in response to a request for advice about how to revise a dissertation, I replied, almost without thinking, “Don’t write lonely.” I certainly never have, at any stage in this project. I remember being told as an undergraduate that studying English literature could be a solitary occupation, but luckily for me that has proven untrue. This project began as a course paper for Michael McKeon when I was a graduate student at Rutgers University, and I thank him both for encouraging my initial insights and for generously guiding me since then. Aspiring to the rigor of his thinking and the generosity of his spirit has always improved me as a scholar and a teacher. My committee members at Rutgers University—Michael McKeon, Paula McDowell, Jonathan Kramnick, William Galperin—were a model of how to think about literature. Paula McDowell was a remarkable reader and I greatly appreciate her encouragement since then: it feels as though we have pursued these ideas together. Jonathan Kramnick offered important advice about writing, academe, and publishing that I vividly remember and often share with others. William Galperin added insight to this project from its beginning and helped me to keep its conclusion in view. Brent Edwards indefatigably pushed the concerns of my dissertation in new directions and brought his incisive perspective to every claim I made. The original contours of this project are indebted to his thinking. John Sitter generously provided his expertise about how to expand and improve my dissertation, which I looked back upon until the completion of this book.

My debts to my friends at Rutgers University are too significant to be described adequately. Graduate school never felt like a lonely place, because Hillary Chute, Rick Lee, and Joe Ponce responded with long phone calls, spontaneous reading sessions, afternoon chai, and celebratory dinners, all of which gives some sense of their investment in my intellectual endeavors. This project acquired a lot of its first shape because of their efforts. Kathy Lubey and Kristin Girten were important fellow travelers during this time and afterward; I appreciate their tireless ability to see the promise in my work when I was not always sure of it myself. It was at Rutgers that I came to appreciate the insight and advice of Tanya Agathocleous about publishing, teaching, and being a professor. Asohan Amarasingham, Robert Goldstein, and Andrew Thompson, “ancient friends,” have ever been ready to talk about literature even if they did not always understand exactly what I was rambling on about. I met Natalie Phillips at the moment when this dissertation started to become a book, and much of this transition was spurred by her attentive reading.

Not enough can be said about my colleagues at Connecticut College, where I visited for one year, and at Wheaton College in Massachusetts. All of them provided me with a warm environment within which to complete this book. Thanks are owed to David Greven and Alex Beecroft, who have been great friends and interlocutors on everything. At Wheaton, particular thanks go to the members of the Wheaton College Faculty Writing Group, past and present—Francisco Fernandez de Alba, Touba Ghadessi, Alizah Holstein, Yu-Gen Liang, Rolf Nelson, Gail Sahar—who read through this project at many different stages, as well as to Claire Buck, Shawn Christian, Tripp Evans, Paula Krebs, Ellen McBreen, and Josh Stenger. All of them offered friendship, support, and sharp thoughts, and I will remember my years in Providence, Rhode Island, with fondness.

The fellows at the Bill and Carol Fox Center for Humanistic Inquiry at Emory University, where I was in residence during 2009–2010, and the center’s staff—Keith Anthony, Colette Barlow, Amy Erbil—and director, Tina Brownley, made Emory a wonderful place in which to overhaul my manuscript. That my time at the Fox Center was one of the most productive of my life is a testament to the place. Special thanks must be reserved for Benjy Kahan, whom I met at the Fox Center and who read the manuscript multiple times, always offering illuminating thoughts. This book is much better because of our collaboration, and it is hard to imagine its existence without his invaluable comments. While in Atlanta I was happy to become friends with Aaron Santesso and Crystal Lake and to renew my friendship with Paul Kelleher; each of them gave me a new perspective on eighteenth-century studies. Crystal read a number of chapters in their final stages and always supplied insights exactly when I needed them.

Several other organizations and fellowships contributed to the completion of this project, including the NYU Long Eighteenth–Century Colloquium (thanks to Paula McDowell and Colin Jennings), Georgia Colloquium in Eighteenth-and Nineteenth-Century Literature (thanks to Chloe Wigston Smith), the Daniel Francis Howard Fellowship at Rutgers University, the David L. Kalstone Memorial Fund, the Marion and Jasper Whiting Foundation Fellowship, and the Wheaton College Summer Grant. Thanks also to the staffs of the British Library, the National Library of Wales, the National Library of Scotland, the National Gallery of Scotland, and the National Library of Australia for their help in guiding research and finding documents and images. And thanks to Martha Vega-Gonzalez for proofreading, to Chris Hyde for expert help with images, and to Lindsay York for fact-checking.

Portions of Chapter 1 appeared first as “Gray’s Ambition: Printed Voices and Performing Bards in the Later Poetry” in ELH 75.1 (2008) and pieces of Chapter 3 appeared as “James Macpherson’s Ossian Poems, Oral Traditions, and the Invention of Voice” in Oral Tradition 24, 2 (October 2009). I thank both of these journals for permission to reprint the material.

Working with the Johns Hopkins University Press has been a wonderful experience; thanks to Matt McAdam, to those in marketing and production, who have been a pleasure to work with, and to the press’s anonymous reader, whose extremely detailed report made this into a sharper book. Special thanks must go to Anne Whitmore for her meticulous copy editing, which unfailingly improved my work.

My family—Hugh, Cyndie, Mike, Michelle, Tyler, and Dylan—has always provided me with a place away from this project and some perspective on who I was before it started. They have truly been there the whole way, and “thank you” does not say enough for that. This book is dedicated to Rachel Brewster, for all of those things that mattered beyond this book and thus made it possible.