ABSTRACT
Emily Eden (1797–1869) recorded her observations of India in the form of letters, collected and published in Up the Country (1866), and a collection of sketches published as Portraits of the Princes & People of India (1844). In her letters, she described the discomforts of staying in an alien land, far from her yearned for England, thus establishing a constant contrast between her motherland and the remote Other, India. In her letters, there are several references to the action of stopping the trip and sketching while observing a picturesque India. The picturesque serves as an instrument to apprehend the experiences she lived as a traveller away from her homeland. Emily Eden’s focus on the picturesque makes us wonder whether her depictions of the people, landscapes or customs belong to the Orientalist discourse, as developed by Said. Both artistic forms, the collection of her letters and her portraits, are revealingly insightful to understand Emily Eden’s persona, her context and her presence in India as a memsahib, as well as her perceptions of the Empire and her role in India in the pre-Mutiny years. Although Emily Eden wrote from within the colonial system, this chapter aims to show how she created an alternative, personal and unique account of the imperial presence in India.
