Historically informed, theoretically sophisticated and critically perceptive, Elizabeth Kowaleski Wallace's engagingly written The British Slave Trade and Public Memory is a remarkable achievement in cultural criticism. Only someone who combines Wallace's knowledge of the eighteenth century with her critical acumen could show so convincingly why and how Britain's dominant role in the slave trade two hundred years ago informs British material and textual culture at the turn of the twenty-first century. -- Vincent Carretta, University of Maryland, editor of Unchained Voices: An Anthology of Black Authors in the English-Speaking World of the Eighteenth Century With her deep knowledge of eighteenth-century British history and culture, Elizabeth Kowaleski Wallace ventures into the present to examine ways in which contemporary Britons are dealing with Britain's history of slave trading and slave ownership. This project is unique in its imaginative rethinking of disciplinary boundaries and historical periods. With her analysis and evaluation of these various kinds of social practices and popular culture, Wallace enters into public debates current in Britain about nation, identity, and social justice that are crucial to Britain's attempt to see itself as a multiethnic society. -- Beth Tobin, Arizona State University, author of Colonizing Nature: The Tropics in British Arts and Letters, 1760-1820 This engaged and engaging study considers how slavery has been represented in British popular culture at the twentieth century's end. Films and television mini-series, plays and novels, museum exhibitions, and history trails all come under Kowaleski Wallace's discerning gaze. Those who think the transatlantic slave trade is 'simply history' will be moved to think again after reading this book. -- Madge Dresser, University of the West of England, Bristol, author of Slavery Obscured: The Social History of the Slave Trade in an English Provincial Port

How does a contemporary society restore to its public memory a momentous event like its own participation in transatlantic slavery? What are the stakes of once more restoring the slave trade to public memory? What can be learned from this history? Elizabeth Kowaleski Wallace explores these questions in her study of depictions and remembrances of British involvement in the slave trade. Skillfully incorporating a range of material, Wallace discusses and analyzes how museum exhibits, novels, television shows, movies, and a play created and produced in Britain from 1990 to 2000 grappled with the subject of slavery. Topics discussed include a walking tour in the former slave-trading port of Bristol; novels by Caryl Phillips and Barry Unsworth; a television adaptation of Jane Austen's Mansfield Park; and a revival of Aphra Behn's Oroonoko for the Royal Shakespeare Company. In each case, Wallace reveals how these works and performances illuminate and obscure the history of the slave trade and its legacy. While Wallace focuses on Britain, her work also speaks to questions of how the United States and other nations remember inglorious chapters from their past.