Generic selectors
Exact matches only
Search in title
Search in content
Post Type Selectors
post
page
product
Want to stay in the loop with latest bookish news and views? Subscribe to HarperBroadcast!

Memsahibs : British Women in Colonial India

By Ipshita Nath

 699.00 inclusive of all taxes

  • Amazon

  • Warning: Undefined variable $productid in /var/www/html/harper_staging/wp-content/themes/harpercollins/woocommerce/content-single-product.php on line 399

    Warning: Undefined variable $productid in /var/www/html/harper_staging/wp-content/themes/harpercollins/woocommerce/content-single-product.php on line 407
  • Or from your local bookseller.
We will notify you when the book is released!
Please allow notification and avoid private mode for this feature to work.

About the book

For young Englishwomen stepping off the steamer, the sights and sounds of humid colonial India were like nothing they’d ever experienced. For many, this was the ultimate destination to find a perfect civil servant husband. For still more, however, India offered a chance to fling off the shackles of Victorian social mores.

The word ‘memsahib’ conjures up visions of silly aristocrats, well-staffed bungalows and languorous days at the club. Yet these women had sought out the uncertainties of life in Britain’s largest, busiest colony. Memsahibs introduces readers to the likes of Flora Annie Steel, Fanny Parks and Emily Eden, accompanying their husbands on expeditions, travelling solo across dangerous terrain, engaging in political questions, and recording their experiences. Yet the Raj was not all adventure. There was disease, and great risk to young women travelling alone; for colonial wives in far-flung outposts, there was little access to ‘society’. Cut off from modernity and the Western world, many women suffered terrible trauma and depression.

From the hill-stations to the capital, this is a sweeping, vividly written anthology of colonial women’s lives across British India. Their honesty and bravery, in their actions and their writings, shine fresh light on this historical world.

Pages: 368

Available in: Hardback

Language: English

Ipshita Nath

Ipshita Nath has a PhD in English Literature, and is currently a Postdoctoral Research Fellow working in the area of disease and healthcare in colonial India, at the Department of History, University of Saskatchewan. Her short story collection, The Rickshaw Reveries, was published in 2020.

Read More

Railing against ‘repetitive and limiting representations’ of memsahibs, Nath champions, instead, their colourful personalities, creative output, and considerable sociocultural impact, offering a vibrant alternative lens through which to view British women in the Raj. - CHANDRIKA KAUL - Professor of Modern History, University of St Andrews

Memsahibs shows through their own writings that British women in the Raj saw their lives as adventurous, within the confines of a colonial world ruled by gender, race, and class, and themselves as heroic, surviving Indian dangers and British tedium. - INDIRA KARAMCHETI - Postcolonial literature specialist and Associate Professor of American Studies, Wesleyan University

On The blog

17 Books to Read if You Loved ‘Smoke and Ashes’

Read more

Celebrate #NonFictionNovember With Our Superb Books

Read more

Memsahibs

Author Ipshita Nath on Documenting the Intricate Lives of Memsahibs

Read more

HarperCollins Presents Memsahibs: British Women in Colonial India By Ipshita Nath

Read more

Valli

Rely on Our New Releases this July!

Read more

Books by Ipshita Nath

Recommended for You