ABSTRACT
The series of letters published as 'Griffe Epistles' appeared between August and December of 1837, but in form and content it is based on a literary model of twenty years earlier: Thomas Moore's satiric verse letters published as The Fudge Family in Paris. The main focus throughout a large part of the series is the interaction between the Griffes and their experience of leaving Britain and adjusting to the unfamiliar surroundings of Calcutta. The letters included are those of Mr and Mrs Griffe: he gives an overview of the commercial world of Calcutta, and she describes the material conditions of domestic life in the household shared by the British and their Indian servants. The Oriental Observer and Literary Chronicle, known at earlier stages of its existence as the Oriental Observer or the Oriental Literary Observer, was one of the longer-running periodicals of Calcutta, a weekly paper published in 1827-1841.
