Conservatism is notoriously difficult to define. In the present study, conceptual metaphor theory is used to elucidate the nature of this ideology in its early phase when it emerged in England as a force struggling with the ideas of the French Revolution. It can be shown that conservative authors frequently do not conform to the pattern of orientational metaphors described by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson (1980), according to which "up" is usually regarded as positive and "down" as negative. Conservatives often associate their own ideas with depth or a downward movement, whereas the loathed ideas of the political opponents are related to height or an upward movement. This dichotomy is closely connected to the polarity between solidity, stability and weight on the one hand and gaseity, volatility and lightness on the other. The study bases its analysis on numerous political tracts, pamphlets, and novels from the 1790s and early 1800s.

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By disregarding the relation between Victorian literature and its illustrations, literary research has largely failed to explain what the experience of reading fiction in the nineteenth century was like. The original version of Rider Haggard's She, which was published in instalments in the illustrated weekly The Graphic in 1886/87, is a prominent example of this academic neglect. This article highlights the complexity of text-image-relations in Haggard's imperial romance by examining two levels of interaction between word and image: the interaction of the written text and its illustrations within the frame of the novel as well as the dialogue the illustrated novel has with other materials in the journal it is embedded in. On both levels, the authentication of the fictional story is seen as a primary function of the images. The publication of this fantastic adventure novel within a plethora of imperial images did, however, not only influence the perception of the literary text, it also contributed to an understanding of the British Empire as fantasy. The fact that images, through their affective dimension, powerfully influence people's opinions and mentalities is particularly important for gauging the "political" impact of Victorian colonial literature.

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