British domestic realities intruded even into novels never set in the Orient

Evidence

Even George Eliot, who never visited the Orient herself, could not sustain the Jewish equivalent of an Oriental pilgrimage in Daniel Deronda (1876) without straying into the complexities of British realities as they decisively affected the Eastern project. — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 492

Categorization

• XREF: Confirms that the ‘Orient’ in British letters was always a mirror of British interests — a scaffolding point for the imagined-community concept. — connects to: British possession of India constrained imaginative writing about the Orient — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 428; British Oriental imagination was constrained by actual colonial possession
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 492
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: British possession of India constrained imaginative writing about the Orient — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 428; British Oriental imagination was constrained by actual colonial possession