Polish Culture in Britain: Literature and History, 1772 to the Present

This edited volume explores the historical, cultural and literary legacies of Polish Britain, and their significance for both the British and Polish nations. The focus of the book is twofold. First, it investigates the history of Polish immigration and the ways in which Polish immigrants have conceptualised their own experiences and encounters with Britain and the British. Second, it examines how Poles and Poland have been represented by Anglophone writers in both fictional and non-fictional forms of discourse. Inevitably, these issues are intertwined. Polish experiences of Britain have been shaped, in part, by British ideas about Poland, just as British notions of Poland have been transformed by the emergence of large and culturally active Polish communities in the UK. By studying these issues together, this volume develops a wide-ranging and original analysis of Polish Britain.

Maggie Ann Bowers is Senior Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Portsmouth, UK. She is the editor of two special issues focusing on contemporary writing and culture: Journal of Postcolonial Writing’s ’Imaginary Europes’ and Wasafiri’s ’North American Native Literature and Literary Activism’. She is also the author of Magic(al) Realism (2004), and the editor of the multilingual volume Convergences and Interferences: Newness in Intercultural Practices (2001).

Ben Dew is Associate Head of the School of Humanities at Coventry University, UK. He is the author of Commerce, Finance and Statecraft: Histories of England, 1600-1780 (2018) and the editor of Tea and Commerce (2010) and Historical Writing in Britain (2014).