Hartly House, Calcutta: Phebe Gibbes

Book info: Hartly House, Calcutta: Phebe Gibbes (Paperback, 272 pages) – Manchester University Press, 2019. Language: English.

This novel is a designedly political document. Written at the time of the Hastings impeachment and set in the period of Hastings’s Orientalist government, Hartly House, Calcutta (1789) represents a dramatic delineation of the Anglo-Indian encounter. The novel constitutes a significant intervention in the contemporary debate concerning the nature of Hastings’s rule of India by demonstrating that it was characterised by an atmosphere of intellectual sympathy and racial tolerance. Within a few decades the Evangelical and Anglicising lobbies frequently condemned Brahmans as devious beneficiaries of a parasitic priestcraft, but Phebe Gibbes’s portrayal of Sophia’s Brahman and the religion he espouses represent a perception of India dignified by a sympathetic and tolerant attempt to dispel prejudice. From the Inside Flap Back cover I saw the Nabob s eyes, sparkling with admiration, fixed on my face! His state palanquin followed. Four pillars of massy silver supported the top, which was actually encrusted with pearls and diamonds; and, instead of verandas, fine glass plates on every side, as well as the back and front, to shew his Mightiness s person to the greatest advantage. I would have given the world on the instant to have been a Nabobess and entitled to so magnificent a train. I am dying, Arabella, to have one of these very elephants at my command! An entertaining account of Calcutta These letters indeed are written with a degree of vivacity which renders them very amusing. Mary Wollstonecraft one of the earliest British novels of India of a transcultural love affair between the heroine Sophia Goldborne and a young Brahman. Although positively reviewed by Mary Wollstonecraft it soon vanished from literary history; only recently has it begun to arouse the interest of students of eighteenth-century colonial literature. [Franklin] has done a splendid job editing the novel, with a full introductory essay and explanatory notes making it available to researchers, students, and the general reader. Nigel Leask, Regius Professor of English, University of Glasgow [E]xcellent new edition of Gibbes s novel ... Michael Franklin s introduction and extensive notes are both exemplary. Peter Parker, TLS This new edition, introduced, and heavily annotated by Michael Franklin, should be welcomed by both literary scholars and historians. Maya Jasanoff, London Review of Books From the Back Cover

Back cover

‘I saw the Nabob’s eyes, sparkling with admiration, fixed on my face! … His state palanquin followed. Four pillars of massy silver supported the top, which was actually encrusted with pearls and diamonds; and, instead of verandas, fine glass plates on every side, as well as the back and front, to shew his Mightiness’s person to the greatest advantage. … I would have given the world on the instant to have been a Nabobess and entitled to so magnificent a train. … I am dying, Arabella, to have one of these very elephants at my command!’

‘An entertaining account of Calcutta … These letters indeed are written with a degree of vivacity which renders them very amusing.’
Mary Wollstonecraft

‘one of the earliest British novels of India … of a transcultural love affair between the heroine Sophia Goldborne and a young Brahman. Although positively reviewed by Mary Wollstonecraft … it soon vanished from literary history; only recently has it begun to arouse the interest of students of eighteenth-century colonial literature. [Franklin] has done a splendid job editing the novel, with a full introductory essay and explanatory notes … making it available to researchers, students, and the general reader.’
Nigel Leask, Regius Professor of English, University of Glasgow

‘[E]xcellent new edition of Gibbes’s novel ... Michael Franklin’s introduction and extensive notes are both exemplary.’
Peter Parker, TLS

‘This new edition, introduced, and heavily annotated by Michael Franklin, should be welcomed by both literary scholars and historians.’
Maya Jasanoff, London Review of Books

About the Author Michael J. Franklin is Professor of English in Swansea University, and has published widely upon representations of India