"Nationalism, Imperialism and Identity in Late Victorian Culture provides an account of ideas of national character in late Victorian culture, with a wide reference to literature and popular culture around the time of the Boer War (1899-1902), and a particular scrutiny of images of the soldier. In specific images, narratives and motifs, the book highlights dynamic tensions between the external boundaries of empire and of civil society, and between class antagonisms and national projections.

New sources and materials are introduced, showing how the trauma of the Boer War for British culture may be explored in changing representations of the soldier. These changes cannot be theorized adequately in terms of an intensification of patriotism, the development of, or the crises of, imperialism. Attridge finds that the Boer War was both the last Victorian conflict, yet had much in it that anticipated modernity."--BOOK JACKET.