Antebellum America, in the time of the so-called “American Renaissance,” has traditionally been characterized by its “strong sense of national distinction.” In her meticulously researched, beautifully written and hugely engaging book, Elisa Tamarkin demonstrates that antebellum Americans could, in fact, “be most national while lost in fantasies of belonging elsewhere” (1). The primary “elsewhere” of her study is, of course, England. Through a series of fascinating historical case studies and close readings of literary and pictorial texts, the author persuasively argues that devotion to, for example, the symbols and rituals of English monarchy could function as “displaced patriotism” (16) for American citizens. Emptied of meaningful political content, the pomp and pageantry of royalty could be indulged in precisely because the subjugation they had once signified had already been wholeheartedly rejected. Thus the spectacle of the Prince of Wales's visit in 1860 could serve as the cynosure for a symbolic display of republican unity even with Civil War looming. The huge crowds of diverse American citizens were able to “appreciate the baroque machinery of monarchy because they [would] never be its subjects” (37).

In these early discussions of “monarch-love,” Tamarkin brilliantly evokes the adoration, the fascination with trivial royal habits, even the collective obsession with the possibility of a transatlantic marriage for the young Albert Edward, in prose as genuinely witty as the primary research is impressively broad and deep. If one were feeling uncharitable, one might suggest that the author enjoys her material rather too much, invariably offering three quotations from contemporary accounts of the visit where one would do. But this would be to deny her the pleasure of making the reader frequently laugh out loud, a rare treat indeed from an academic work of this stature.

The most illuminating section of the book concerns the role of England and perceived Englishness in American abolitionist discourse, including the journals of black American travellers to Britain like Frederick Douglass and Samuel Ringgold Ward. These accounts evince a fascination with Britain which is only partially to do with the pivotal role it played in abolitionism. There are, Tamarkin observes,

If black writers' apparent obsession with country churches and royal petticoats seems “just short of absurd” (180), Tamarkin convincingly demonstrates, once again through deft analysis of first-hand accounts, how it also answers a need for African Americans to consolidate their identities and to advance themselves as intellectuals in a sympathetic environment traditionally associated with learnedness, culture and gentility.

Anglophilia contains much more that is worthy of praise – notably the reading of Hawthorne's American Claimant Manuscripts – but I hope the cited examples make plain that any scholar interested in antebellum America and transatlantic cultural relations will find themselves richly rewarded by Tamarkin's book. After all, “being able to take pleasure in someone else's value confers value on ourselves” (xi).