Title: British India and Victorian Literary Culture
Abstract:The book traces the development of British Indian literature from the early days of the nineteenth century to the end of the Victorian period. Previously unstudied poems and essays drawn from the thri...The book traces the development of British Indian literature from the early days of the nineteenth century to the end of the Victorian period. Previously unstudied poems and essays drawn from the thriving periodicals culture of British India are examined alongside novels and travel-writing by authors including Philip Meadows Taylor, Emma Roberts and Rudyard Kipling, and the historical narratives of James Tod. Opening with an overview and discussion of the literary marketplace of the early nineteenth century, it moves on to the analysis of key moments, events and concerns of Victorian India, including the legacy of the Hastings impeachment, the Indian ‘Mutiny’, the <italic>sati</italic> controversy, and the rise of Bengal nationalism. These are re-assessed within their literary and political contexts, emphasising the engagement of British writers with canonical British literature (Scott, Byron) as well as the mythology and historiography of India and their own responses to their immediate surroundings. The book examines representations of the experience of being in India, in chapters on the poetry and prose of exile, and the dynamics of consumption. It also analyses colonial representations of the landscape and societies of India itself, in chapters on the figure of the bandit / hero, female agency and self-sacrifice, and the use of historiography to enlist indigenous narratives in the project of Empire.Read More