Author: Saros Cowasjee
Editor(s): Saros Cowasjee
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Year: 2005
Language: English
Pages: 1031
ISBN/UPC (if available): 0195665007
Description
The most enduring legacy of the British Raj in India has been the literature it occasioned. While Kipling, Forster, and Orwell may have become household names over the years, there are other lesser known writers whose contribution is equally important. It is these writers, with their body of work, who make Raj fiction into a genre of its own. The four novels in this volume, together, span the entire period of Raj Literature, offering a vivid portrait of colonial India from the time of Kipling to Indian Independence. They trace the changing relationship between the rulers and the ruled from the heyday of the Empire to its demise in 1947, and add to our understanding of the British and their predicament in India.
With the possible exception of Kipling's Kim, there is not a Raj novel of distinction that has steered clear of the question of Indian nationalism. Steel's On the Face of the Waters is about the Indian mutiny of 1857, now frequently referred to as India's first war of Independence. Candler's Siri Ram--Revolutionist, as the title suggests, deals with an Indian revolutionary. The treatment is unsympathetic, but the issue is faced squarely, bearing in mind British thinking of the time. Weston's Indigo offers the most dignified portrait of a nationalist in the making, while Mason's The Wild Sweet Witch presents a nationalist who is, despite his failings, brave and honest. Mason, however, goes a step further by admitting that the time for Indian freedom has arrived.
Compiled and edited by Saros Cowasjee, this collection comes with a comprehensive introduction offering the reader a valuable insight into the literary imagination at work in that era. All novels have been out of print for several years and almost impossible to procure. The decision to revive these is based largely on the continued fascination with Anglo-Indian writing and its growing importance in critical postcolonial discourses.
Prepared with the general reader in mind, this anthology should also fascinate students of English literature and all those interested in colonial history and constructions of race and gender.
REVIEWS
ON THE FACE OF THE WATERS
Besides Mrs. Steel's book, all other stories dealing with the Mutiny seem thin and melodramatic. It is altogether a remarkable book.
-The Westminister Gazette
SIRI RAM-REVOLUTIONIST
Candler has written, in the form of a novel, so powerful a study of the psychology of Indian Anarchism that his book must surely escape oblivion for a long time to come.
-Times Literary Supplement
INDIGO
It is hard, offhand, to think of any novel, except perhaps A Passage to India, that has so authentic a feeling for the country.
- New Yorker
THE WILD SWEET WITCH
This book is a definite contribution to the literature of India. Mr. Woodruff happens to have written it in the form of a novel, but it is at the same time of considerable anthropological importance.
-John Morris, The New Statesman and Nation
Contents
INTRODUCTION
ON THE FACE OF THE WATERS
by Flora Annie Steel
Preface
Author's Note
Book I: THISTLED DOWN AND GOSSAMER
Going!Going!Gone
Home, Sweet Home
The Great Gully Fixed
Tape and Sealing-wax
Bravo!
The Gift of Many Faces
BOOK II: THE BLOWING OF THE BUBBLE
In the Palace
In the City
On the Ridge
In the Village
In the Residency
The Yellow Fakeer
The World Went Forth
BOOK III: FROM DUSK TO DAWN
Night, Dawn, Daylight, Noon, Sunset, Dusk
BOOK IV: SUCH STUFF AS DREAMS ARE MADE OF
The Death-Pledge
Peace!Peace!
The Challenge
Bugles and Fifes
The Drum Ecclesiastic
Vox Humana
BOOK V: THERE AROSE A MAN
Forward
Bits, Bridles, and Spurs
The Beginning of the End
At Last
Through the Walls
Rewards and Punishments
BOOK VI: Appendix A, Appendix B
SIRI RAM-REVOLUTIONIST
by Edmund Candler
PREFACE
PART I
The College
PART II
The Village
PART III
The Cave
PART IV
The Kali Yuga
PART V
The Sacrifice
INDIGO
by Christine Weston
THE WILD SWEET WITCH
by Philip Mason
PREFACE
AUTHOR'S FOREWORD
PART I
The Uprooting, 1875
PART II
The Uprooting, 1923
PART III
The Uprooting, 1938
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES
GLOSSARY