Author Description

Acts of Union explores the political relationship between Scotland and England as it was negotiated in the literary realm in the century after the 1707 Act of Union. It examines Britain, one of the precursors to the modern nation, not as a homogeneous, stable unit, but as a dynamic process, a dialogue between heterogeneous elements. Far from being constituted by a single Act of Union, the author contends, Britain was forged - in all the variant senses of that word - from multiple acts of union and dislocation over time.