Author: Margaret Wilson
Ralph Crane/
Translator(s)/Editor: Ralph Crane
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Year: 2007
Language: English
Pages: 192
ISBN/UPC (if available): 0195685865
Description
Daughters of India is the third novel to appear after Charles Pearce’s Love Besieged (2003) and Maud Diver’s Lilamani (2004), as part of OUP India’s efforts to publish lesser-known Raj fiction.
Margaret Wilson’s Daughters of India, first published in 1928, explores the relationship between the two main American characters, Davida Baillie, a missionary teacher (and thinly-veiled portrait of Wilson herself), and John Ramsey, her superior in the mission in Aiyanianwala, their work with the Christian and Muslim communities from the Flowery Basti, and the breaking up of a kidnapping ring in the nearby village of Pir Khanwala.
The novel is of particular interest to the postcolonial reader because it offers a broader perspective on the sociology of India in the early twentieth century than can be found in most Anglo–Indian (Raj) missionary novels of the time. Moreover, as an American and a missionary, Wilson was located on the margins of the Anglo–Indian society, a position which is reflected in the fresh perspective she offers on the imperial experience.
This new edition of Wilson’s Daughters of India includes a detailed introduction, a chronology of Margaret Wilson, a map, and extensive explanatory notes which provide the reader with a useful critical commentary to the novel.
Contents
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
INTRODUCTION
By Ralph Crane and Radhika Mohanram
A Note on the Text
A Chronology of Margaret Wilson
Map
DAUGHTERS OF INDIA
Explanatory Notes