Original Letters from India

Paperback | 24 March 2010

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Why remember Eliza Fay nearly two centuries after her death? Her origins are obscure; she was not beautiful, rich, or outlandishly accomplished. Yet the letters recounting her 1779 voyage from England to India captivated E. M. Forster, who discovered them while in India and in 1925 persuaded Virginia and Leonard Woolf to publish them in England. The letters have been delighting readers ever since with their truth-is-stranger than- fiction twists and turns, their earthy humor, and their depiction of an indomitable, unstoppable woman. These days you can hop on a plane in England and be in India the next morning, but when the intrepid Mrs. Fay departed from Dover more than two hundred years ago, it was to embark on a grueling twelve-month journey through much of Europe, up the Nile, overland through the deserts of Egypt, and finally across the sea to India. Along the way she and her fellow travelers encountered wars, territorial disputes, brigands, and even imprisonment. Fay was a contemporary of Jane Austen, but her adventures are worthy of a Daniel Defoe heroine. Her letters-unfiltered, forthright, and often hilarious-bring the perils and excitements of an earlier age to life.

Industry Reviews

"The Letters put Raiders of the Lost Ark in the category of timid and passive inactivity." --The Courier-Mail

"In [the letters] we discover India through a woman blessed with unusual vitality and great humanity, a lively eye and a sharp ear. . . . In her exuberant presence we quickly come to see why Forster rated her 'a work of art.'"--Francis Robinson, History Today

"Born in a country where caste was life, she had no caste to speak of, and she had no husband worth mentioning in an age when a woman could scarcely survive without one. Yet she survived. . . . Her sharp unsentimental middle-class eyes saw through the vanities of this world." --Katherine Anne Porter, The New Republic

"Were she only frank and na ve, it would be something, but she is much more: a soul courageous and gallant, an eye and ear always on the watch. . . . Though [her letters] have value historically, their main interest is human: they show us a highly remarkable character, triumphant over the difficulties of life and narrative style." --E. M. Forster

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