About this item
Highlights
- In 1850, the legendary Koh-i-noor diamond, gem of Eastern potentates, was transferred from the Punjab in India and, in an elaborate ceremony, placed into Queen Victoria's outstretched hands.
- About the Author: Adrienne Munich is Professor of English, Art, Cultural Studies, and Gender Studies, Emerita, at Stony Brook University and author and editor of numerous books, including Queen Victoria's Secrets.
- 296 Pages
- Literary Criticism, European
Description
About the Book
"The author of this volume is the longtime coeditor of the scholarly journal, Victorian Literature and Culture, and during her research of the highly successful book, Queen Victoria's Secrets, she became curious about the proliferation of print material on diamonds around the time of Victoria's Diamond Jubilee in 1897. The result is this book-a fascinating, accessible, and illustrated exploration of the various ways Victorian writers wrote about diamonds and the evolution of the cultural significance of these gems. The volume begins in 1849 when the famous Koh-i-noor diamond was transferred from the Punjab in India to Victoria, Queen of the British Empire. The political significance was obvious. Diamonds were a symbol of political power--only for the very rich and powerful. But, with Victoria's Diamond Jubilee in 1897, the idea of owning a diamond began to be marketed to the middle class. In all kinds of writings, diamonds began to take on an affordable romance. Mining of diamonds in India, South Africa, and other British colonies grew, with all the attendant commerce, conflicts, prejudices, and exploitations of the people of color who mined the diamonds and the stereotyping of the Dutch Jews who cut and sold them. By examining the literature, journalism, advertisements, and other printed sources, Munich presents a sweeping, vivid, and dazzling account of the source and development of our ongoing love affair with diamonds"--Book Synopsis
In 1850, the legendary Koh-i-noor diamond, gem of Eastern potentates, was transferred from the Punjab in India and, in an elaborate ceremony, placed into Queen Victoria's outstretched hands. This act inaugurated what author Adrienne Munich recognizes in her engaging new book as the empire of diamonds.
Diamonds were a symbol of political power--only for the very rich and influential. But, in a development that also reflected the British Empire's prosperity, the idea of owning a diamond came to be marketed to the middle class. In all kinds of writings, diamonds began to take on an affordable romance. Considering many of the era's most iconic voices--from Dickens and Tennyson to Kipling and Stevenson--as well as grand entertainments such as The Moonstone, King Solomon's Mines, and the tales of Sherlock Holmes, Munich explores diamonds as fetishes that seem to contain a living spirit exerting powerful effects, and shows how they scintillated the literary and cultural imagination.
Based on close textual attention and rare archival material, and drawing on ideas from material culture, fashion theory, economic criticism, and fetishism, Empire of Diamonds interprets the various meanings of diamonds, revealing a trajectory including Indian celebrity-named diamonds reserved for Asian princes, such as the Great Mogul and the Hope Diamond, their adoption by British royal and aristocratic families, and their discovery in South Africa, the mining of which devastated the area even as it opened the gem up to the middle classes. The story Munich tells eventually finds its way to America, as power and influence cross the Atlantic, bringing diamonds to a wide consumer culture.
Review Quotes
Empire of Diamonds is a bold take that impresses with the amount and different kinds of literature it considers as well as the sweep of time (1819 to 1931) it covers. Munich's writing is poised and engaging.... Ultimately, this text will be indispensable for anyone taking up the question of gemstones in Victorian literature, just as her previous monograph, Queen Victoria's Secrets, is for studies of the monarchy.
-- "Nineteenth-Century Contexts"Empire of Diamonds offers a sweeping, vivid, richly detailed, at times dazzling account of the diamond as a figure for empire in nineteenth-century British writing. Munich's book is more than a sequence of sparkling interpretive rhapsodies: it has a genuine argument to make about the imaginary life of the Victorian empire.
--Ian Duncan, University of California, Berkeley, author of Human Forms: The Novel in the Age of EvolutionThe imperishable beauty of diamonds, so this gorgeous book argues, was a vector for imperial rapaciousness from Britain to India to South Africa; diamonds' distracting glamor could never quite conceal the exploitation, violence, racial animosity, and death that have always accompanied their unearthing and circulation. Stylishly written, deeply learned, and richly interdisciplinary, this book provides the necessary settings (historical, geopolitical, economic, cultural, religious, and psychoanalytic) to illuminate every facet of the most fabulous and gruesome of diamond tales, from Victorian times to the present.
--Margaret Homans, Yale University, author of Royal Representations: Queen Victoria and Victorian Culture 1837-1876Vibrantly interdisciplinary... [ Empire of Diamonds] demonstrates, often dazzlingly, how the quest for these gems both shaped andreflected British imperial consciousness--and how their legacy still lingers.
-- "Victorian Studies"About the Author
Adrienne Munich is Professor of English, Art, Cultural Studies, and Gender Studies, Emerita, at Stony Brook University and author and editor of numerous books, including Queen Victoria's Secrets.