This analysis looks at attempts to unlimit visual representation at its edges in the ‘minor’ media of book illustrations and landscape sketches. The unprecedented interest of Romantic artists for these marginal forms of visual expression allowed them to explore the liminal space between representation and its absence, in which were articulated the essential tensions of the sublime: the encounter between images of sense and the supersensible that exceeds them, as well as the transition from the beautiful to the sublime. Postmodern theory, especially through Jacques Derrida’s notion of parergonality and Jean-Luc Nancy’s definition of sublime ‘unlimitation’, makes it possible to see these transitional and unstable spaces as significant places of visual exploration, and to explain in what way they can be seen as a response to the challenge of the sublime. The argument first focuses on the enthusiasm of Romantic artists for book illustrations, which were used as a means to structure the work of art from within rather than from its edges, and further examples of ‘unlimitation’ are then provided by changing compositional practices in landscape painting, in connection with plein air sketching and the use of watercolour.

This chapter examines the multiple workings of a concept of nation which underlay at key points the overwhelmingly positive response to the ancient Assyrian discoveries made by Austen Henry Layard in the 1840s. Layard's discoveries were made in Mesopotamia at the behest of Stratford Canning. Canning's sponsorship of Layard was a direct response not merely to the discovery itself but to its French enshrinement. Layard's discoveries were followed in almost breathless detail in the Illustrated London News (ILN), the uniquely successful new journal of visual presences, just then, at mid-nineteenth century, entering its first golden age. The Albert Memorial, whose overall design was submitted to Queen Victoria by George Gilbert Scott in 1863, has been called an 'exquisite summary of the aspirations of English art'. The Albert Memorial, that is, is a national monument, but not precisely a purely nationalist monument.

The predominant narrative of both new and old histories of the Khasi mission is the pre-eminence of Ann Jones as founding missionary and bringer of the book. The prime architect of the Christianisation of the hill tribes, the de novo 'father' of Khasi literature in his role as the man who put the Khasi language into written form using Welsh orthography. Many missionary and other published accounts tend to skip over the role of indigenous informants in the process of translation. With no knowledge of Bengali script, Jones employed the Roman alphabet when recording Khasi words. Thomas Jones went to the Khasi Hills with the express aim of educating the Khasis. The importance of education for the Welsh was stressed by generations of their leaders and preachers.

The missionary Thomas Jones II, the local magistrate Harry Inglis, the civil servant's wife Emma Shadwell, and the soldier F.T. Pollok, projected their constructions of Britishness, Welshness, gender or indigeneity onto the canvas of the Khasi Hills. Hugh Roberts and John Roberts visited the grieving Gwenllian Jones at Nongsawlia, but found her hardened against the mission she blamed for her husband's demise. In the aftermath of the Jones versus Inglis affair of the 1840s, Harry Inglis preferred charges against judge Stainforth for borrowing money from a European in his jurisdiction, contrary to civil service regulations. On 27 September 1853, A.J.M. Mills, officiating judge of the Sudder Court, tabled his report to the government of Bengal on the Khasi and Jaintia Hills. The landscape of the hills was a wild canvas on which the clear lines of masterful authority and manly power were delineated.

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book draws on a consistent set of themes that influenced urban life between 1870 and 1939, in addressing the impact of imperialism on popular culture. It presents a consistent thematic analysis of three urban communities from the south, midlands and north of England through examining popular responses to empire. The book explores the local and imperial nexus and whether imperial wars in the far reaches of the Empire were translated into tangible localised issues. It examines the role of volunteerism and patriotism through two important conflicts, the Boer War and the First World War. The book also explores the complexities of propagating an imperial message through schooling and national institutions or events such as Empire Day, public radio broadcasts and the 1924 Wembley Exhibition of Empire.

Support for the IRA took place as far away from the limelight as possible. Nevertheless republican priests had to account for themselves often enough, to their bishop or religious superior for example, or, if they were curates, to their parish priest. This was also true for priests who publicly supported Sinn Féin. The current chapter examines the interaction between these priests and their social surroundings, ecclesiastical and lay. Bishops, religious superiors and parish priests had agendas of their own that determined their responses. It was important to the bishops not to alienate the republican camp, but they also had to respond to the criticisms of scandalised conservatives, while ensuring that lines of communication with the government in Dublin Castle remained open. Moreover, they were concerned for the Irish church’s reputation abroad, especially in the Vatican. Religious superiors wanted to avoid internal conflict within their communities, and parish priests often simply wished to keep trouble away from their church doors. How did these ecclesiastical authorities respond to the activities of republican priests? Which forms of support were acceptable to them and which were not? And how did the priests in question defend their actions to their superiors?

From 1844 onwards, growing numbers of colonists began to put pressure on London to abolish the convict system and to grant colonial self-government. Colonial opposition to convict transportation was waged in the language of extreme moral outrage. Abolitionists deployed a highly charged, sensationalising and explicitly sexualised discourse of bodily excess, corporeal degradation and moral devastation. The abolitionist focus upon 'unnatural' crimes undoubtedly served a range of mobilising and propagandising purposes. The campaign for the abolition of transportation had thus become linked increasingly to the movement for colonial self-government. As the antithesis of self-government, sodomy figured both as a powerful condemnation of tyranny and as a symbol of man's potential for 'savagery'. Sexual acts such as sodomy and bestiality were considered 'unspeakable' by the nineteenth century. Given that the 1832 Reform Act had systematically reconstituted claims to political power around notions of masculine independence and morality.