This edited volume explores the historical, cultural and literary legacies of Polish Britain, and their significance for both the British and Polish nations. The focus of the book is twofold. First, it investigates the history of Polish immigration and the ways in which Polish immigrants have conceptualised their own experiences and encounters with Britain and the British. Second, it examines how Poles and Poland have been represented by Anglophone writers in both fictional and non-fictional forms of discourse. Inevitably, these issues are intertwined. Polish experiences of Britain have been shaped, in part, by British ideas about Poland, just as British notions of Poland have been transformed by the emergence of large and culturally active Polish communities in the UK. By studying these issues together, this volume develops a wide-ranging and original analysis of Polish Britain.
1 Introduction.-Part I Before 1918.-2 From the Moon to Kennington
Common: British Perceptions of the Poland and the Poles 17501850.-3 Brave
and Patriotic Poles: British Politics and Polish Independence, 18301847.-4
Why Britain? The Motives and Circumstances of Polish Political Refugees
Arrivals to the United Kingdom in the 1830s and 1840s.-5 Polish History in
Britain: The Work of Napoleon Feliks.-6 Poland Has No Claim on You: By
Celias Arbour and British Representations of Poland in the
VictorianEra.-Part II After 1918.-7 Polish Post-World-War-II Exiles in
Britain: The London Wiadomosci and Its Cultural Milieu.-8 Migrant Lives and
the Dynamics of (Non)belongingin the Polish-British Works of A.M. Bakalar,
Wioletta Greg, and Agnieszka Dale.-9 A Country Constructed from Memories:
Representations of Poland and Poles in Migrant Writing in theTwenty-First
Century.-10 Poles Among Others: Literary Perspectives on Polish Migrants in
Britain Since 2004.-11 The Good Pole in an Ailing Britain: An Imagological
Approach to Polish Migration in British Literature
Maggie Ann Bowers is Senior Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Portsmouth, UK. She is the editor of two special issues focusing on contemporary writing and culture: Journal of Postcolonial Writings Imaginary Europes and Wasafiris North American Native Literature and Literary Activism. She is also the author of Magic(al) Realism (2004), and the editor of the multilingual volume Convergences and Interferences: Newness in Intercultural Practices (2001).
Ben Dew is Associate Professor in Cultural History at the Centre for Arts, Memory and Communities, Coventry University, UK. He is the author of Commerce, Finance and Statecraft: Histories of England, 1600-1780 (2018) and the editor of Tea and Commerce (2010) and Historical Writing in Britain (2014).
