This is history of the idea of imperialism, economic, political, and cultural imperialism, in English literature from the sixteenth to World War I. Brie traces the idea to English Puritanism (after sketching the model of Rome and medieval successors of Troy) and points at Milton as the first full embodiment of an imperial writer in England. The Cromwell cult opens one major strand of imperialist thought in English literature, followed by writers like Marvell, Gage, Dryden, Defoe, J. Thomson, E. Burke and W. Blake (16-55). Only one major writer opposes colonial expansion: J. Bentham. The nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (83-277) bring more imperialist writers in poetry, fiction and essays: Coleridge, Carlyle, Ruskin, Tennyson, Disraeli, Rhodes, Kipling a. o. Sometimes Social Darwinism colors the debate.
This is a scholarly book, well documented and full of quotes also from minor writers.