Cutting through conventional binaries such as 'East' and 'West', 'Orient' and 'Europe', Piya Pal-Lapinski explores the ambiguities and restores the wonder of the Ottoman capital, Istanbul, as experienced by 19th-century British writers in their European context. The author's personal fascination with the city today, no less than in history and the literary imagination, leaps off the page in this highly original study.

Roderick Beaton, Emeritus Koraes Professor of Modern Greek & Byzantine History, Language & Literature, King's College London

Wide-ranging, deeply learned, and razor sharp, this is the book on Istanbul and Ottoman Turkey that scholars of Romantic and Victorian literature have been waiting for. Pal-Lipinski brilliantly illuminates the imaginative and cultural influence of Istanbul on emerging ideas of identity, empire, and transnationalism, giving us fresh ways of thinking about both the past and the present. An instant must-read.

Andrew Stauffer, Professor of English, University of Virginia, USA.