Book review: Victorians and Modern Greece: Literary and Cultural Encounters: edited by Efterpi Mitsi & Anna Despotopoulou, Abingdon & New York, Routledge, 2025. £135 (hbk), ISBN 9781032495200

‘To Greece we give our shining blades’.Footnote1 The 1826 words of Irish poet Thomas Moore echoed the ambivalent sentiments towards Greece that would perpetuate during the Victorian Age (1837-1901). This edited book is an eclectic collection of research essays that examines various elements of the representations of Modern Greece in Victorian Britain, specifically those of the literary and cultural natures. The question of links between Ancient and Modern Greece; the distinctiveness of Orientalist and Western perceptions; and assumed Philhellenism vs emerging anti-Hellenism, form just a handful of the complex concepts explored by Efterpi Mitsi and Anna Despotopoulou in this volume. Additionally, the concepts tackled are all confidently placed within the British imperial space, as well as the post-Greek Revolution (1821-1832) world. The Victorian Era was a time where the early Greek nation-state, the declining Ottoman Empire, and the rising British Empire comfortably, and conflictingly, coexisted. This makes the analysis of written materials from this period all the more infatuating.