The Original Letters From India Of Mrs Eliza Fay

With reproduction of original t.p.: Original letters from India; containing a narrative of a journey through Egypt, and the author's imprisonment at Calicut by Hyder Ally. To which is added, an abstract of three subsequent voyages to India. By Mrs. Fay. Calcutta, 1817.

The contributions to this book amply demonstrate the richness, vitality, and complexity of the colonial transactions between Britain and India over the last two centuries, and they do so by approaching the topic from a specific perspective: by interpreting the rubric 'new readings' as broadly, creatively, and productively as possible. They cover a wide range of literary responses and genres: eighteenth-century drama, the gothic novel, verse, autobiography, history, religious writing, journalism, women's memoirs, travel writing, popular fiction, and the modernist novel. Brought together in one volume, these essays offer a small, but representative sample of the multifaceted literary and cultural traffic between Britain and India in the colonial period. In the richness and diversity of the various contributors' strategies and interpretations, these new readings urge us to return once again to texts that we think we know, as well as to explore those that we do not, with a freshly renewed sense of their complexity, immediacy, and relevance.

"Considered as a whole, this collection offers a basis for generalisations and specialised inquiry that will support both teaching and further research on the role of women in world history."—Itinerario "The book deserves credit for stimulating such questions, which have broad appeal among scholars of colonialism, including those who do not work on gender. Its broad coverage and accessible language give it access to a wider audience than many academic anthologies, thereby advancing the interests of all those who value the study of colonial history."—Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History Women and the Colonial Gaze is the first collection to present a broad chronological and geographical examination of the ways in which images and stereotypes of women have been used to define relationships between colonial powers and subject peoples. In essays ranging from ancient Rome to twentieth-century Asia and Africa, the contributions suggest that the use of gender as a tool in the imperialist context is much older and more comprehensive than previously suggested. Contributors look particularly at the ways in which colonizers constructed a national identity by creating a contrast with the colonial "other," in contexts ranging from Christian views of Islam women in medieval Spain to French beliefs about Native American women. They also examine the ways in which images of gender as constructed by colonial powers impacted the lives of native women from colonial-era India to Korea to Swaziland. Comparative in its approach, the volume will appeal to students and historians of women's studies, colonialism, and the development of national identity.

A wide-ranging exploration of women's travel writing between 1714 and 1789, emphasising women's contribution to processes of cultural change.