Letters from Madras: During the Years 1836-1839

Letters from Madras appeared anonymously in 1843 and is one of the earliest published accounts of the Englishwoman’s experience of India, antedating Fanny Parkes (1850) and Emily Eden (1866). Spirited, highly intelligent, independently-minded, Julia Thomas, as she then was, arrived in Madras with her civil servant husband in 1837. It was a time when attitudes were changing, the early, relaxed fusion of European and Indian cultures giving way to a separation between governors and governed. Company indifference towards Indian religion was under pressure from missionaries and from Evangelicals at home. Julia involved herself in education and founded a school. She did her best to tread a path between Indian beliefs, company policy, and her own Anglican orthodoxy. In its involvement with these matters Letters from Madras is a chapter in the history of Europe’s engagement with India. Julia was resolved to maintain her ‘orientalism’, and to understand India. She was sometimes amused and exasperated by Indian life and customs, but she learnt the language, seized every opportunity to visit Indians (and, when possible, Indian women). Alyson Price has edited the letters with skill: her introduction puts them in their historical context. The dominant themes in the letters are education and missionary activity. But it is the vividness of Julia’s writing, the understated wit, as well as her analytical understanding that commands attention and makes this book an enjoyable read. It will interest scholars of literature, culture, and South Asian history.