Introduction : The traffic in poems : traversing the Atlantic
States of exile / Tricia Lootens
The cafetal of Maria del Occidente and the Anglo-American race for Cuba / Kirsten Silva Gruesz
Is the native an American? National identity and the British reception of Hiawatha / Kate Flint
Hiawatha's black Atlantic itineraries / Tavia Nyong'o
Emma Lazarus and the golem of liberty / Max Cavitch
A marriage of cultures
Lord Byron, Lady Byron, and Mrs. Stowe / William Galperin
Mapping the cultural field : Aurora Leigh in America / Mary Loeffelholz
Transatlantic modern love / Adela Pinch
Measured distances
Bryant, or, American romanticism / Virginia Jackson
Robert Browning, transported by meter / Yopie Prins
No coward souls : poetic engagements between Emily Bronte and Emily Dickinson / Michael Moon

The transatlantic crossing of people and goods shaped nineteenth-century poetry in surprising ways that cannot be fully understood through the study of separate national literary traditions. American and British poetic cultures were bound by fascination, envy, influence, rivalry, recognition, and piracy, as well as by mutual fantasies about and competition over the Caribbean. Drawing on examples such as Felicia Hemans's elaboration of the foundational American myth of Plymouth Rock, Emma Lazarus's ambivalent welcome of Europe's cast-off populations, black abolitionist Mary Webb's European performances of Hiawatha, and American reprints of Robert Browning and George Meredith, the eleven essays in this book focus on poetic depictions of exile, slavery, immigration, and citizenship and explore the often asymmetrical traffic between British and American poetic cultures. Contributors to the volume include Max Cavitch, Kate Flint, William Galperin, Kirsten Silva-Gruesz, Virginia Jackson, Mary Loeffelholz, Tricia Lootens, Michael Moon, Tavia Nyong'o, Adela Pinch, and Yopie Prins. In their essays, they consider the work of Emily Brontñ, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Robert Browning, William Cullen Bryant, Lord Byron, Emily Dickinson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, George Meredith, MarÃa del Occidente, Mary Webb, and William Wordsworth, among others