Oxford University Press 1995

European and British Writing on India 1600-1800

India Inscribed is the first comprehensive study of European and British writing on India in the period 1600-1800, from the foundation of the East India Company to the defeat of Tipu Sultan. The book charts Britain’s transition from trading partner to colonial power through many sources previously ignored by scholars: travel accounts, missionary letters, histories, and parliamentary debates, as well as illustrations, novels, and poetry.  Kate Teltscher argues that writing about India is not monolithic or univocal, but that representations of the region are diverse, shifting, historically contingent, and frequently competitive.

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 ‘An important addition to the growing body of scholarship on non-Indian attempts at representing the subcontinent … [A] lucidly written, strenuously argued book’ – G. Arunima, The Book Review

‘What is striking about India Inscribed is Teltscher’s close attention to nuance and detail and the care with which she describes paradoxes, complexities and shifts in European accounts of India … Historians ought to welcome able works of literary scholarship like this’ – C. A. Bayly, TLS

 ‘Kate Teltscher, the young literary critic, brilliantly analyses some European and British literary and non-literary texts so as to highlight the variously derived ideologies which informed Company rule in India’  – Seema Alavai, Indian Express

‘Teltscher draws upon an impressive range of (mainly English language) texts and recent scholarly criticism. The result is a sophisticated and often subtle discussion that duly recognizes the complex nature of the ideological issues surrounding an emergent empire … Undoubtedly a significant addition to the growing critical literature about Western representations of the East’ – David Arnold, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society