Hon. Emily Eden · 1866

Up The Country

USD 1,450

Up The Country: Letters Written to Her Sister from the Upper Provinces of India

Eden, Emily. ‘Up the Country’ Letters Written to Her Sister from the Upper Provinces of India. London: Richard Bentley, 1866. Bibliographic Description Edition: First edition. Format: Two volumes bound in one; vi + 302pp; [ii] + 263pp. Octavo (20 x 13 cm). Binding: Contemporary half calf over marbled boards. The spine features raised bands, gilt decoration in compartments, and a contrasting red gilt-lettered leather title label. Matching marbled fore-edges and endpapers.

A scarce and highly celebrated epistolary travel narrative by the English novelist and poet Emily Eden (1777–1869). The volumes compile the sharp, witty letters Eden wrote to her sister, Frances "Fanny" Eden, during her time in India from 1835 to 1842. She traveled alongside her sister and her brother, George Eden, 1st Earl of Auckland, who served as the Governor-General of India during this period.

Eden’s writing provides an elegant, elite, and shrewdly observed firsthand account of the massive, slow-moving vice-regal progress through the Upper Provinces. While her letters vividly capture the dazzling social rounds, local festivals, landscapes, and encounters with regional rulers, they are underscored by a looming political gravity. Written on the brink of the First Afghan War, the narrative serves as a critical historical record of a vanishing era in British colonial rule.

As noted by travel historian Jane Robinson in Wayward Women, the letters are timelessly "famous for their wit, their elegance, and their sharp-eyed observation."

Edition

First Edition ( In 2 volumes).

Condition

A very good, sound copy. The top corners are a trifle rubbed. The interior shows scattered foxing, which is more pronounced on the preliminary pages and the final 15 leaves, but the text remains bright and easily legible throughout.

Status

Available