The Bohemian Republic: Transnational Literary Networks in the Nineteenth Century

In the mid-nineteenth century, cultural Bohemias emerged in Paris, London, New York, and Melbourne. This book explores Bohemia's cross-Channel, transatlantic, and trans-Pacific migrations, focusing on networks and borders. It reconsiders the lives and works of British, Irish, American, and Australian Bohemians, the transnational networks of Bohemia, the presence and influence of women, and its relationship with the marketplace. Bohemia emerges as a marginal network with a powerful influence on popular culture, pioneering material, social, and aesthetic innovations in literature, art, journalism, and theatre.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 320 pages
Publication date: 30 May 2022
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd

In the mid-nineteenth century, a series of cultural Bohemias emerged in various cities around the world, including Paris, London, New York, and Melbourne. This book, focusing on networks and borders as central analytical frameworks, explores for the first time the cross-Channel, transatlantic, and trans-Pacific migrations of Bohemians, situating their creative expressions and social practices within a global context of ideas and actions. While the story of Parisian Bohemia has been extensively documented, there is much less knowledge about its Anglophone translations.

The Bohemian Republic offers a groundbreaking reinterpretation of the Bohemian phenomenon. It delves into the overlooked lives and works of British, Irish, American, and Australian Bohemians, uncovers the transnational networks of Bohemia, reclaims the presence and influence of women in Bohemia, and reconsiders Bohemia's relationship with the marketplace. Bohemia emerges as a marginalized network that exerted a paradoxically powerful influence on the development of popular culture, pioneering material, social, and aesthetic innovations in literature, art, journalism, and theatre.

This book is underpinned by extensive and original archival research, which repopulates the concept of Bohemianism with layers of networked voices, expressions, ideas, people, places, and practices that made up its constituent social, imagined, and interpretive communities. The reader is brought closer than ever to the heart of Bohemia, a shadowy world inhabited by the rebels of the mid-nineteenth century.

Dimension: 229 x 152 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780367630034