ABSTRACT
Henry George Keene’s father, also H. G. Keene, had a distinguished record of service with the East India Company. The elder Keene was an officer in the Madras army, subsequently joined the Madras civil service, and finally took up the post of professor of Arabic and Persian at Haileybury from 1824 to 1834. Keene was a prolific writer: his oeuvre includes studies of the history of India, and guidebooks to the areas within which he resided in the north-western provinces, as well as at least seven volumes of poetry, and several autobiographical works. Reviews of Keene’s poetry appeared sporadically throughout his career, in periodicals including Blackwood’s and the Athenaeum. The Calcutta Review maintained a consistent attitude to his work from beginning to end of his career: in 1857 his writing was judged to be ‘never sublime and seldom beautiful.
