Behold the Hero: General Wolfe and the Arts in the Eighteenth Century

Alan McNairn analyses representations of General James Wolfe in both popular culture and high art, from mass-produced ceramics to Benjamin West's famous painting of the death of Wolfe, from popular songs to the writings of Oliver Goldsmith, Horace Walpole, Tobias Smollett, Thomas Godfrey, Benjamin Franklin, and William Cowper. He argues that Wolfe became the embodiment of British patriotism and the superiority of the English way of life, and that the multitude of literary and visual works about Wolfe, which focus primarily on his death, were created in an environment in which legends of inspiring, politically persuasive heroics were much in demand. Behold the Hero will be of interest to historians of eighteenth-century England and North America, art historians, material historians, and students of eighteenth-century English literature and drama.