The Idea of English Ethnicity

by Robert J.C. Young

The Idea of English Ethnicity “Robert Young has written a compelling and thorough textual history of English ethnicity and its discursive relation to the history of racial theory. Comprehensive, carefully considered, and clearly written, this book sets the standard against which any future study of Englishness will be assessed. The bar has been lifted a couple of notches higher.”
David Theo Goldberg, University of California “What is Englishness?, Robert J. C. Young asks, and in The Idea of English Ethnicity he offers an impressively well-researched and eminently readable answer.”
Werner Sollors, Harvard University

312 pages, Hardcover

First published December 3, 2007

About the author

Robert J. C. Young FBA (D.Phil, Exeter College, Oxford; born 1950) is a postcolonial theorist, cultural critic, and historian. He is Julius Silver Professor of English and Comparative Literature at New York University, and was Dean of Arts & Humanities at NYU Abu Dhabi, 2015–2018. Previously he was Professor of English and Critical Theory and a fellow of Wadham College, Oxford University, where he was one of the founding editors of the Oxford Literary Review as a grad student. He is currently President of the AILC/ICLA Research Committee on Literary Theory.