Literary Cosmopolitanism in the English Fin de Siecle: Citizens of Nowhere

Derived from the ancient Greek for ‘world citizenship’, cosmopolitanism offers a radical alternative to identities and cultural practices built on the idea of the nation, asking individuals to imagine themselves instead as part of a global community that cuts across national and linguistic boundaries. This volume offers a detailed critical analysis of this phenomenon with reference to literature written in English at the turn of the twentieth century. It examines how a number of key authors embraced the challenges and opportunities of world citizenship, and how this ideal was reflected in the periodical press and in the artificial language movements that proliferated in these years.