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This article discusses the English Men of Letters series, as a representative work of Imperial Life writing, which was utilized by the British colonizers to influence local minds in favor of the colonial rule. Available studies which discuss EML series and Victorian biographies do so in the context of England, in this study, however, the colonial imperatives necessitated the publishing of English biographies which were needed in the colonies to support discursively the nondiscursive and expansionist agenda of the colonizers on the ground. The paper
argues that the series was a tool to materialize what Macaulay had imagined in 1835: a class English in taste, opinions, morals and intellect (Macaulay 1835). For this class to be created, rhetoric of Englishness was required which could pull subjectivities towards it in the consensual environment of an educational institution. One crucial cog in this juggernaut of colonizing Englishness was thus the EML series, the paper argues. It is thus an attempt to further understand the historical schema of imperialism with the help of biographies. The paper ends on a forward-looking note and emphasizes the need to develop a discourse on ways to resist hegemonic readings in institutional settings.
Shahzeb Khan, Azka Zia. (2021) Hegemonizing Minds through Life Writing: The Case of English Men of Letters as an Imperial Text, Journal of the Punjab University Historical Society, Volume 34, Issue 1.
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