The book offers readings of discourses about food in a wide range of sources, from canonical Victorian novels by authors such as Dickens, Gaskell, and Hardy to parliamentary speeches, royal proclamations, and Amendment Acts.  It considers the cultural politics and poetics of food in relation to issues of race, class, gender, regionalism, urbanization, colonialism, and imperialism in order to discover how national identity and Otherness are constructed and internalized.

Introduction: The Belly of a Nation * PART I: Eating English * Corn Kings: Disraeli, Hardy, and the Reconciliation of Nations * Men and Menus: Dickens and the Rise of the "Ordinary" English Gentleman * "I have no country": Domesticating the Generic National Woman * PART II: Alien Appetites * "Miss Sharp adores pork": Ingesting India from The Missionary to The Moonstone * Blood and Rum:  Power and the Racialization of the Victorian Monster * Conclusion: The Bill of Fare-Thee-Well

Annette Cozzi isAssistant Professor ofHumanitiesandCultural Studies at the University of South Florida.