ABSTRACT
James Burke was born into an Anglo-Irish family: his father, Colonel Sir John Burke, held an Irish baronetcy, and both his father and later his brother Thomas served as MP for the constituency of Galway. Days in the East was written during an interlude in this career: according to the work’s preface, he became ill while on active service in the Western Provinces of India, and turned to the writing of poetry to while away the homeward voyage, in April 1842. It was not his first attempt at poetry—an earlier work, Addiscombe: A Tale of our Times, had been published under the initials ‘J. H. B.’—but it was the only one to attract any critical attention. One aspect of Burke’s personal experience, his Irish background, clearly informs his view of India. The opening of Canto II hails the success of the East India Company in ‘warding off interminable woe’ and conflict by forbidding the proselytizing of religious ‘fanatics’.
