Indian Travel Writing, 1830-1947

Indian Travel Writing is a new five-volume collection co-published by Routledge and Edition Synapse. Hitherto, the paucity of readily available travel writing produced by imperial subjects themselves has long been apparent, and this anthology addresses that lack. A veritable treasure-trove, it brings together scarce documents which are currently widely dispersed or very difficult for scholars, researchers, and students across the globe to locate and use.

The collection confirms the deeply cosmopolitan sensibility possessed by many Indian travellers, and their narratives provide insightful contemporary critiques of the British Empire and of Euro-American culture more generally. The gathered works often exhibit considerable expertise in local cuisine, politics, and poetry, as well as a keen interest in political theory, human rights, and class conflict. Beyond Britain, continental Europe, and the USA, the collection also includes writing by Indians who travelled to Russia, China, the Far East, Australia, and Africa.

Indian Travel Writing draws on the narratives of a diverse range of writers, including Indian princes, statesmen, lawyers, reformers, sportsmen, artists and curators, politicians, and merchants. Each piece is reproduced in facsimile, giving users a strong sense of immediacy to the texts and permitting citation to the original pagination. The collection will be particularly welcomed by historians and those working in colonial-discourse studies. It will also be of interest to anthropologists and literary scholars. Each volume is supplemented by a substantial introduction, newly written by the editor, Pramod K. Nayar. The collection also includes a detailed appendix providing data on the provenance of the gathered materials.

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Pramod K. Nayar is also the editor of the five-volume Women in Colonial India (2013) (978-0-415-52555-8), another Routledge and Edition Synapse co-publication.