Connecting Spaces: The Travelogues and Letters of Lady Abala Bose

This book examines how nineteenth-century Bengal witnessed women writers like Krishnabhabini Devi, Prasanyamoyee Devi, Swarnakumari Devi and Abala Bose interrogated social stereotypes. It presents the first translation of travel writings and letters by Abala Bose, and examines an Indian woman’s close observation as she toured India in colonial times and Europe, America and Japan at the height of British imperialism. Her travelogues in colonial India and imperial England relate to and interrogate the hegemonic role of Western ideologies and deconstruct stereotypes of women’s travelogues, thus contributing to the female consciousness and tradition of women’s writings.

The volume will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of South Asian history, imperial and colonial history, and gender and women’s studies.

Saptarshi Mallick is an Assistant Professor of English, Sukanta Mahavidyalaya, Dhupguri, Jalpaiguri, University of North Bengal. He has been a Charles Wallace India Trust (doctoral) Fellow and an UKIERI Fellow in the U.K. He is an Ernst Mach Fellow (postdoctoral) at the Karl - Franzens - Universität Graz, Austria. Here, he has also been a visiting faculty in the Summer Semester of 2020. He has edited seven anthologies, among them most recently Śūdraka’s Mṛcchakaṭikā A Reader (Birutjatio, 2022). He is an Associate Editor of Gitanjali and Beyond, an international, open access e-journal of the Scottish Centre of Tagore Studies (ScoTs), Edinburgh.