Tag: India

A Novel of the Last Sati (Suttee): Agnes Strickland’s “Candava” (1849) | Stephen Basdeo (ed.)

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First published in Home Circle in 1849, Agnes Strickland’s Candava; or, The Last Suttee is a dramatic tale of sati, empire, Christian reform, and British intervention in India. This new edition restores the forgotten story with historical context, tracing changing British attitudes from Orientalist fascination to evangelical reform. Strickland’s melodrama culminates in the rescue of an unwilling Indian widow, raising difficult questions about coercion, imperial authority, humanitarianism, and nineteenth-century print culture for modern readers today.

Bandits and Robbers of India

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“I will warn him that he will not find my robbers such romantic, generous characters as those who occasionally figure in the fields of fiction. He will meet with men strangers to that virtue of robbing the rich to give to the poor. They give to the poor indeed, but it is as spies and instruments of their own crimes, or at least in order to avoid detection.” –Charles Macfarlane, 1833.