Emily Eden | |
|---|---|
 Emily Eden, 1835 | |
| Born | 3 March 1797 |
| Died | 5 August 1869 |
| Occupation(s) | Poet, Novelist |
| Notable work | Up The Country: Letters Written to Her Sister from the Upper Provinces of India (1867) The Semi-Detached House (1859) The Semi-Attached Couple (1860) |
| Parents |
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Emily Eden (3 March 1797 – 5 August 1869)[1] was an English poet and novelist who gave witty accounts of life in the 19th century. She wrote a celebrated account of her travels in India, and two novels that sold well. She was also an accomplished amateur artist.[2][3][4]
- ^ Dictionary of National Biography. 1888. p. 356. Retrieved 20 August 2017.
- ^ Poon, Angelia (2017), Enacting Englishness in the Victorian Period: Colonialism and the Politics of Performance, Routledge, pp. 98–, ISBN 978-1-351-94036-8,
By the end of six years, Eden, an accomplished amateur artist, had accumulated a fair number of paintings of ordinary Indians, regal maharajahs and other Indian luminaries, which she subsequently published as Portraits of the Princes and People of India (1844) upon her return to England.
- ^ Nevile, Pran (2010), Sahibs' India: Vignettes from the Raj, Penguin Books India, pp. 42–43, ISBN 978-0-14-306691-0,
Emily Eden, the sister of Lord Auckland, the Governor General (1836-32), was a notable writer and artist. She has left for posterity the remarkable three-volume album of nearly 200 studies entitled 'Watercolour Sketches of Princes and Peoples of India'. Most of the drawings in the album, however, concern the lives of the common people rather than those of the princes. During her travels from Calcutta to Lahore in her brother's suite, she continually sketched the interesting figures she encountered and wrote long letters to her sister which were published in London in 1866 under the title 'Up the Country'. Eden had taken lessons in England from the best drawing masters of the day. Judging from her work we find that she was an accomplished amateur artist and her talent for painting flowered under the Indian sun
- ^ Codell, Julie F.; Macleod, Dianne Sachko (2018), Orientalism Transposed: Impact of the Colonies on British Culture, Routledge, pp. 100–, ISBN 978-0-429-76164-5,
'Emily Eden depicts a different, more privileged point of view.' Published in London two years after her return from the colonial subcontinent in 1842, her volume is a sweeping vision of Indian royalty, political leaders, servants associated with royal households, and even royal pets she encountered during her stay. The 'princes' recorded in her book were mainly political characters crucial to the British imperial enterprise, and took up more space than the 'people' she observed. Of these princes, the Sikh rulers understandably formed the majority, due to the time she spent in the Punjab when the Maharaja Ranjit Singh and Lord Auckland signed a treaty to curb the Russian presence in Afghanistan.