ABSTRACT
The tremendous popularity and output of the novel is one of the main features of nineteenth-century literature. This statement is true of Anglo-Indian, as of all European and American, literature. Its productions in the sphere of fiction far exceed those of any other literary form. In spite, however, of its immense fecundity, the Anglo-Indian novel can claim to have made but few permanent additions to English literature. A concomitant cause of their ill-success in England was their disregard of the well-known, if lamentable, fact, that in things Indian, qua Indian, English people are, or were, profoundly uninterested. If in an Anglo-Indian novel the English public found striking ideas, interesting incident, emotional writing, and all the other requisites which they demand in a novel, they were glad to read it, careless where the scene was laid; but as a mere picture of Anglo-Indian life, however tasteful, clever or picturesque, they held it at arm’s length.
