ABSTRACT
Mary Seyers was born in Calcutta, the daughter of Thomas Seyers, who is variously described as an apothecary and as an official of the East India Company concerned with the trade in opium. She was twenty years old when, in 1850, she married William Carshore, fifteen years her senior, the son of an indigo planter who was working as deputy collector of customs in the district of Fatehpur in north India. Carshore’s own preface to the first edition of Songs of the East represents her as a hesitant author, unsure of both her qualifications and of the critical reception she might expect. Writing of herself in the third person, she emphasizes that she ‘cannot boast an extensive or intimate acquaintance with the literature of the West, and her only object in publishing the following tales and songs has been, to give a more correct idea of native customs and manners, than she has yet observed Europeans to possess’.
