The 'memsahibs' of the British Raj in India are well-known figures today, frequently depicted in fiction, TV, and film. In recent years, they have also become the focus of extensive scholarship. Less familiar to both academics and the general public, however, are the eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century precursors to the memsahibs of the Victorian and Edwardian era. Yet British women also visited and resided in India in this earlier period, witnessing first-hand the tumultuous, expansionist decades in which the East India Company established British control over the subcontinent. Some of these travellers produced highly regarded accounts of their experiences, thereby inaugurating a rich tradition of women's travel writing about India. In the process, they not only reported events and developments in the subcontinent; they also contributed to them, helping to shape opinion and policy on issues such as colonial rule, religion, and social reform.

Volume I, Acknowledgements, General Introduction, Bibliography, Introduction, A Note on the Texts, Jemima Kindersley, Letters from the Island of Teneriffe, Brazil, the Cape of Good Hope, and the East Indies (1777), Maria Graham, Journal of a Residence in India (1812), Editorial Notes, Textual Variants, Volume II, Introduction, Harriet Newell, Memoirs of Mrs Harriet Newell (1815), Eliza Fay, Original Letters from India (1817), Editorial Notes, Volume III, Introduction, Ann Deane, A Tour Through the Upper Provinces of Hindostan (1823), Julia Maitland, Letters from Madras (1846), Editorial Notes, Volume IV, Introduction, Mary Sherwood, The Life of Mrs Sherwood (1854), Editorial Notes