Devolving English Literature examines the literary construction and questioning of a British (rather than simply English) literary identity. Surveying eighteenth- and nineteenth-century writers, including Robert Burns, James Boswell, Walter Scott, and Thomas Carlyle, Robert Crawford argues that Scottish and nonmetropolitan authors left a crucial legacy to American literature, anthropology, and twentieth-century Modernism. In the work of T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, James Joyce, and other Modernists there persist vitally "provincial" as well as national elements. This second edition contains a substantial new chapter, "Waving Citizens," which looks particularly at Scottish writing in the light of the political events that saw the establishment of a national Parliament in Edinburgh in 1999. Topics considered range from Walter Scott and European union to Trainspotting and right-wing politics.