Writing the Empire

"Writing the Empire is a masterpiece of archival research and reconstruction that illuminates and challenges broad-brush narratives of British imperial and colonial history and demonstrates how biography can, in fact, be more than minutiae without meaning."

-- Ben Wilkie, La Trobe University * Journal of Australian Studies *

"Kroller is to be commended for her exploration of the gendered relationships between family members and other intimate connections are well-explored in this book. She took on a monumental task to synthesize an enormous amount of material and pull out cohesive themes for each section, and yet she still managed to include an intersectional lens to her analysis."

-- Victoria Seta Cosby * Ontario History *

"Writing the Empire is a significant piece of scholarship and historians interested in empire and colonialism will benefit from engaging with it."

-- Robert Hogg * The British Columbia Review *

"Eva-Marie Kroller has drawn upon recent scholarship of imperial connections and networking, as well as extensive archival work, to produce an idiosyncratic and highly original history of the extended McIlwraith family."

-- Barbara J. Messamore, University of the Fraser Valley * Canadian Historical Review *

"A splendid accomplishment in literary analysis, family history, and the study of the anatomy of Empire."

-- Andrew Holman, Bridgewater State University * British Journal of Canadian Studies *

"Writing the Empire is a fascinating … history of a family that left its traces [in] Empire politics as well as the international academic and publishing worlds."

* Archiv für das Studium der neueren Sprachen und Literaturen *

"What distinguishes this work from some family histories is its clear-eyed attention to the good and the bad, including the impact of empire on women, Black people, Indigenous people, and other ‘imperial subjects.’"

-- Margery Fee * Canadian Literature *
"Through her intricately woven cross-generational history of a single empire family, the Scottish McIlwraiths, Writing the Empire: The McIlwraiths, 1853–1948, Eva-Marie Kröller expertly demonstrates the roles and meanings of family and the trans-imperial networks that nineteenth-century families accumulated.” -- Ellen Smith, University of Leicester * Journal of British Studies *
“As a multigenerational and collective biography, this volume does much to broaden our understanding of how family, friendship, and professional networks made empire.”
-- Rob Kristofferson, Wilfred Laurier University * University of Toronto Quarterly *
“[T]he global imperial spaces created as a result of British expansionary policies shaped family trajectories like the McIlwraiths' in multifarious ways.” -- David Finkelstein * Victorian Studies *
“The reader inevitably realizes that all the personal sources used in this book represent a world we have lost. So much of this communication would now be conducted by email, seldom printed and kept, or by even more ephemeral mobile phone conversation.” -- John M. Mackenzie, University of Edinburgh * The Round Table