In this unique and revealing examination of the life and works of this complex poet, novelist, journalist, and short story writer, Josh Gosciak sheds light on McKay's significant literary contributions beyond his interactions with Harlem Renaissance artists and writers. Trained as an English Romanticist and possessing a fine eye for literary detail, McKay crafted a verse out of hybridity and diaspora. Gosciak shows how he reinvigorated a modern pastoral through his encounters with some of the major aesthetic and political movements of the late Victorian and early modern periods: Fabianism, internationalism, pacifism, decadence, horticulture, the Arts and Crafts movement, and the vernacular.