Hartly House, Calcutta: Phebe Gibbes

Description

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.

About the author

Michael J. Franklin is Professor of English at Swansea University

Phebe Gibbes was a prolific writer of as many as twenty-two novels, written in the decades between 1764 and 1798. She was a widow with two daughters, her son having died in India