The islanders: Mapping paracosms in the early writing of Hartley Coleridge, Thomas Malkin, Thomas De Quincey, and the Brontes

"The Islanders: Mapping Paracosms in the Early Writing of Hartley Coleridge, Thomas Malkin, Thomas De Quincey, and the Brontes," examines the imaginary kingdoms, or paracosms, in late eighteenth and early nineteenth century British juvenilia, explicating their conception through their geography. This project argues that fundamental to any reading of imaginary spaces is an understanding of the concurrent cartographic ideology of "blank spaces" on the map as potential sites of imperialism. All of these kingdoms were mapped within the era of Geography Militant, the cartographic age that Joseph Conrad, an amateur geographer as well as novelist, defined as a period of an aggressive scientific-minded exploration and colonization, the period between Columbus's encounter with the New World and the solidification of the British empire at end of the nineteenth century. After Edward Said's work on cultural imperialism and British literature, this project uses geography as an entry point from which to begin exploring the relationship between the construction of real and imaginary places. Children who could not physically venture into empire engaged with it through literary projects. Opening with a consideration of geography primers as a tool for conveying colonialist and culturally imperialist ideology, Chapter 1, "Filling in the Blanks: Geography Grammars as Paracosm Primers," scrutinizes the link between mapping real and imaginary domains. Chapter 2, " Ejuxria (1806-180?) and Allestone (1800-1802): Paracosms at the Intersection of Geography Militant and a Romantic Vision of Childhood," compares the ethos of Geography Militant practiced by the paracosmists with an historical construction of childhood as a colonizable space. Chapter 3, "Worlds of Strife: Geography Militant in Thomas De Quincey's Gombroon (1793-1795) and Branwell Bronte's Angria (1827-1848)," argues that paracosms reiterated and simultaneously challenged the scientific and capitalist discourses underpinning assumptions of Western cultural superiority used as imperialist justification. Chapter 4, "The Kingdom of Woman: The Bronte Sisters in Angria and Gondal (1827-1848)," argues that while girls engaged in the same cartographic and literary play of Empire in their paracosms as boys, as female subjects their participation in the equivalent real spheres was limited. Their paracosms thus represent an imaginative negotiation and appropriation of traditionally male-dominated spaces.