How do texts and their readers respond to each other? Reading India, Writing England follows this line of Inquiry through the Indian fiction of Rudyard Kipling and E.M. Forster. Kipling tires to interest an insular British public in the adventure and heartbreak of empire. He uses his experience of India-derived as much from his reading as from his stay in the country-for this purpose. Forester uses Kipling, among his other resources, to crate an alternative critical space to early twentieth-century England. Both authors depend on accounts of myth, philosophy and folklore. The relations that develop among these texts, and the relations between these texts and the fiction of Kipling and Forester constitute stories of their own. Reading India, Writing England sets out these stories and studies the representations they help create. The study begins with the debate on mythology at the time of Kipling. His treatment of India is then examined. Changes in Images of India in the period between Kipling and Forester are analysed before Forester’s handling of India is considered. The ambivalent location of India as home by both authors is explored even as it ceases to be their place of arrival and becomes instead a point of departure.
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