This book examines attitudes towards empire and the creation and perpetuation of a British world-view during the years 1834-1924. Besides focusing on the usual Victorian and Edwardian novelists and poets, surveys of popular culture and anti-empire views are also included. By adopting a longer chronological context, the high level of continuity in beliefs and actions throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries is highlighted. As a result, the period is viewed as a dramatic episode in a much longer story.