A Various Universe explores the rich literature of travel which accompanied the commercial and political expansion of the British people in teh second half of the eighteenth and the first half of the nineteenth centuries. The panorama of the subcontinent unfolding under the scrutiny of intelligent observers, the wealth of information on every aspect of Indian life, the memorable East-West cultural encounter, the extraordinary nature of many of the adventures and confrontations recorded: all provide exciting material which is every bit as educative and thought-provoking now as it was when the book first appeared. Generous excerpts from the original texts are balanced against the author’s own exegeses, offering rich insights to lay readers as well as to literary people, historians, and anthropologists. The new preface to this edition gives the reader a glimpse into what the writing of this book has meant to Dyson in her own subsequent literary career, and encourages us to re-think some of the much-debated issues of recent intellectual discourses on cultural encounters between the West and non-West.
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