Simmons presents her thesis in a unique, cross-disciplinary way that will, I think, make it useful for readers who are interested in both psychological approaches to literature and in British imperialism
without being specialists in the field. ... What Simmons does, that I don't think anyone else has yet done is to combine the basic framework of relational theories ... Read moreof narcissism with a simple, easily grasped overview of imperial culture, in an elegant style blessedly free of jargon. She thus cuts across these two fields of psychoanalytic and colonialist literary studies in a very accessible way.
Clarisse Zimra, University of Illinois at Carbondale This is a remarkable account of the emotional inner world of the western imperialist. Simmon's scholarship is comprehensive, insightful, complex, and very intelligent.
Professor Marshall W. Alcorn Jr., George Washington University Using the theories of Heinz Kohut, W. R. D. Fairbairn, and D. W. Winnicott, Simmons argues that her subjects were caught between triumphal and pessimistic imperialisms reflecting, respectively, the civilizing mission Britain proclaimed and racial/economic exploitation.
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