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This thesis traces metropolitan representations, between 1780 and 1810, of the violent death of Captain James Cook at Kealakekua Bay in Hawaii. It takes an interdisciplinary approach to these representations, in order to show how the interlinked texts of a nascent commercial culture initiated the creation of a colonial character, identified by Epeli Hau’ofa as the looming “ghost of Captain Cook.” The introduction sets out the circumstances of Cook’s death and existing metropolitan reputation in 1779. It situates the figure of Cook within contemporary mechanisms of ‘celebrity,’ related to notions of mass metropolitan culture. It argues that previous accounts of Cook’s fame have tended to overemphasise the immediacy and unanimity with which the dead Cook was adopted as an imperialist hero; with the result that the role of the scene within colonialist histories can appear inevitable, even natural. In response, I show that a contested mythology around Cook’s death was gradually constructed over the three decades after the incident took place, and was the contingent product of a range of texts, places, events, and individuals. The first section examines responses to the news of Cook’s death in January 1780, focusing on the way that the story was mediated by, first, its status as ‘news,’ created by newspapers; and second, the effects on Londoners of the Gordon riots in June of the same year. It suggests that the related demands and concerns of mass culture and commerce inform the representation of Cook’s death in elegy (such as Anna Seward’s Elegy on Captain Cook) and visual art (such as John Webber’s Death of Cook). The second section discusses the further absorption of Cook’s death into metropolitan entertainment culture. The key site for this process was the Leverian Museum, in the centre of London, where artefacts collected by Cook’s crew in Hawaii were displayed in a room dedicated to his memory. The section suggests that these objects were presented as sensational or sentimental relics of distant ‘Owhyhee.’ The techniques by which this took place emerged from similar presentations, in popular entertainment, of antiquities as animated materialisations of a gothic past. These techniques, in often controversial ways, shaped the understanding of Cook’s death, not only in the museum but also in travel writing, theatre, poetry and painting.

Dr. David Livingstone, the Victorian “missionary-explorer”, has attracted more written commentary than nearly any other heroic figure of the nineteenth century. In the years following his death, he rapidly became the subject of a major “biographical industry” and indeed he continues to sustain an academic industry as well. Yet, out of the extensive discourse that has installed itself around him, no single unified image of Livingstone emerges. Rather, he has been represented in diverse ways and put to work in a variety of socio-political contexts. This thesis interrogates the heterogeneous nature of Livingstone’s legacy and explores the plurality of identities that he has posthumously acquired. In approaching Livingstone’s “Lives” the methodology employed is that of metabiographical analysis, essentially a biography of biographies. This framework does not aim to uncover the true nature of the “biographee” but is rather concerned with the malleability and ideological embeddedness of biographical representation. The first chapter considers Livingstone’s own self-representation by critically analysing Missionary Travels, his best-selling travelogue. I argue that the text is more ambivalent than has hitherto been acknowledged and that its heterogeneity facilitated the diversity of Livingstone’s posthumous interpretations. The second chapter discusses Livingstone’s Victorian commemoration, exploring a body of hitherto unexamined remembrance literature, a wealth of obituaries and elegiac poetry. Focusing on a brief historical juncture, the year of his national memorial, presents an opportunity to reflect on some of the foundation stones of his legacy. The next chapter concerns itself with Livingstone’s imperialist construction, certainly his most persistent image. It discusses the way in which he was routinely re-presented in order to meet the evolving demands of empire. Yet, Livingstone was never constructed homogenously at any one colonial moment and so I argue that we should speak of his imperial legacies. The penultimate chapter considers the Scottish dimension of Livingstone’s reputation in a range of contexts, from the Celtic Revival to Kailyard. While some ignored his northern heritage, his national identity was of vital importance for others who used him to negotiate a Scottish national consciousness. The final chapter extends the concept of life-writing to include fictional portrayals of Livingstone. The focus here is primarily on postcolonial literature in which, as a cherished icon of empire, he became a focal point for critique and imaginative violence. The thesis contributes to the growing body of scholarship on life-writing and directs further attention to the changing nature and political efficacy of historical lives. Livingstone emerges as a site of competing meanings; the Victorian hero has himself become a colonised space.