In this book readers are invited to explore a fascinating but neglected field of English letters; the books written by British men and women about their experience in the Indian subcontinent. Over forty individual works are surveyed, covering the time period from when the East India Company began consolidating its powers to the eve of the Mutiny. The author balances generous excerpts from the original texts with her own exegeses to produce a work which offers rich insights to lay readers as well as to professional students of literature, history, sociology, anthropology, and travel writing.