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 crosses the Atlantic, bringing diamonds to a wide consumer culture.

Queen Victoria's central importance to the era defined by her reign is self-evident, and yet it has been surprisingly overlooked in the study of Victorian culture. This collection of essays by noted scholars in literature, cultural studies, art history, and women's studies goes beyond biography and official history to explore the diverse and sometimes conflicting meanings this complex and fascinating figure held for her subjects around the world and even for those outside her empire.

Queen Victoria's central importance to the era defined by her reign is self-evident, and yet it has been surprisingly overlooked in the study of Victorian culture. This collection of essays by noted scholars in literature, cultural studies, art history, and women's studies goes beyond biography and official history to explore the diverse and sometimes conflicting meanings this complex and fascinating figure held for her subjects around the world and even for those outside her empire.

The vital synergy between dress and the cinema has been in place since the advent of film. Broaching topics such as vampires, noir, and Marie Antoinette looks, Fashion in Film uncovers the way in which the alliance of these two powerhouse industries use myriad cultural influences shaping narrative, national identity, and all points in between. Contributor essays address international films from early cinema to the present, drawing on the classic and the innovative. This abundantly illustrated collection reveals that fashion in conjunction with film must be understood in a different way from fashion tout simple."

An unconventional figure in an age that excluded women from government, Victoria was accorded prominence unavailable to any male monarch. Yet as Adrienne Munich argues in this fascinating work, the originality of the solid, dour icon that was Victoria lay, paradoxically, in her very ordinariness. The first book to fully investigate the influence of this icon of British history, Queen Victoria's Secrets demonstrates the firm grasp the queen held on the cultural imagination of her country, exploring how Victoria created and maintained her royal authority. Gracefully weaving together feminist, anthropological, and postcolonial approaches, Munich searches out the myriad, often contradictory incarnations of the queen in the minds of her people. How did Victoria convincingly maintain her power for forty years after Prince Albert's death, never giving up her identity as a grieving widow? How did Victorian society's reverential treatment of their queen conflate with the monarch's plain, middle class public image? These are some of the secrets Munich examines in her richly detailed work. In demonstrating the subtle but powerful ways in which Victoria performed significant cultural work, Queen Victoria's Secrets goes against the grain of Victoria scholarship, which has tended to overlook the queen's political and cultural centrality. This stylish, accessible portrait will be of great interest to those who are fascinated by the myth-making and secrets of the Victorian age.

Amy Lowell (1874-1925), American poet and critic, was one of the most influential and best-known writers of her era. Within a thirteen-year period, she produced six volumes of poetry, two volumes of criticism, a two-volume biography of John Keats, and countless articles and reviews that appeared in many popular periodicals. As a herald of the New Poetry, Lowell saw herself and her kind of work as a part of a newly forged, diverse, American people that registered its consciousness in different tonalities but all in a native idiom. She helped build the road leading to the later works of Allen Ginsberg, May Sarton, Sylvia Plath, and beyond. Except for the few poems that invariably appear in American literature anthologies, most of her writings are out of print. This will be the first volume of her work to appear in decades, and the depth, range, and surprising sensuality of her poems will be a revelation.
The poetry is organized according to Lowell's characteristic forms, from traditional to experimental. In each section the works appear in chronological order. Section one contains sonnets and other traditional verse forms. The next section covers her translations and adaptations of Chinese and Japanese poetry, whereby she beautifully renders the spirit of these works. Also included here are several of Lowell's own Asian-influenced poems. Lowell's free, or cadenced verse appears in the third part. The last section provides samples of Lowell's polyphonic prose, an ambitious and vigorous art form that employs all of the resources of poetry.
The release of "The Selected Poems of Amy Lowell "will be a major event for readers who have not been able to find a representative sampling of work from this vigorous, courageous poet who gave voice to an erotic, thoroughly American sensibility.

This study explores the passion with which Victorian male writers and artists gave meaning to the myth of Perseus and Andromeda and its medieval analogue, the legend of St George and the dragon. It demonstrates how men used the myth to exert their own gender on Victorian culture.