In his book Imagining America (originally published in 1980), Peter Conrad shows how the English literary imagination over the course of a century devised for itself a contradictory series of ideal or alarming Americas which it then sets out to actualize.

Peter Conrad is an Australian-born academic specialising in English literature. He has been a Fellow of All Souls, Oxford (1970-3), was Hodder Fellow at Princeton University (1975-6) and has lectured at several American universities.

1. Imagining America: Versions of Niagara 2. Institutional America: Frances Trollope, Anthony Trollope, and Charles Dickens 3. Aesthetic America: Oscar Wilde and Rupert Brooke 4. Epic (and Chivalric) America: Rudyard Kipling and Robert Louis Stevenson 5. Futuristic America: H. G. Wells 6. Primitive America: D. H. Lawrence in New Mexico 7. Theological America: W. H. Auden in New York 8. Psychedelic America: Aldous Huxley in California 9. Mystical America: Christopher Isherwood in California