Up the Country
Letters Written to her Sister from the Upper Provinces of India

Eden's candid letters represent thousands of nineteenth-century women who dutifully accompanied their men to outposts of the British Empire.

Emily Eden (Author)

9781108020756, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 23 September 2010

270 pages
21.6 x 14 x 1.5 cm, 0.35 kg

Raised in a politically-active household, Emily Eden's childhood prepared her well for her role as companion to her brother, the Governor-General of India. Outwardly all that a middle-class spinster should be, Eden never permitted diplomacy to dilute her letters home. Published in 1866, the letters provoked sympathy among women who had similarly endured dusty bonnets to accompany fathers and husbands to distant outposts of the British Empire. As one reviewer noted, this book is 'addressed primarily to a public consisting of wives, sisters, or daughters of possible Governors-General, and is sure therefore of general popularity'. There is still plenty to amuse modern audiences. Volume 2 conveys the growing anxiety surrounding the Anglo-Afghan war, stirring and sympathetic accounts of poverty, and the author's eagerness to return to her much-loved Kensington. Eden's descriptive passages and personal reflections are all narrated with her signature sensitivity and wit.

1. Umritzir, Dec. 10, 1838
2. Dec. 1, 1838
3. Dec. 24, 1838
4. Sutlej, Jan. 6, 1839
5. Soonair, Jan. 18, 1839
6. Jan. 26, 1839
7. Feb. 6, 1839
8. Kurnaul, Feb. 28, 1839
9. Simla, March 19, 1839
10. April 11, 1839
11. May 30, 1839
12. June 19, 1839
13. August 1, 1839
14. Simla, Sept. 1, 1839
15. Simla, Sept. 27, 1839
16. Simla, Oct. 15, 1839
17. Pinjore, Nov. 3, 1839
18. Kurnaul, Nov. 13, 1839
19. Kootub, Nov. 27, 1839
20. Dieg, Dec. 10, 1839
21. Agra, Dec. 29, 1839
22. Jan. 2, 1840
23. Jan. 12, 1840
24. Nuddea Gaon, Jan. 23, 1840
25. Culpee, Jan. 29, 1840
26. Benares, Feb. 17, 1840.

Subject Areas: Asian history [HBJF]