“Exotic Blossom” or Cosmopolitan Victorian?: Toru Dutt and Fin-de- Siècle London and Calcutta

Abstract

What did it mean to be a young, female Bengali writer living in late nineteenth-century Calcutta but also in London and Cambridge? What did it mean to be raised within a family protected by its wealth and status but also ostracised in India for its religious and cultural iconoclasm – more specifically for its collective conversion from Hinduism to Christianity and consequent loss of caste? This paper presents the literary work of Toru Dutt (1856-1877) and the reception in both Britain and India of her posthumous collections A Sheaf Gleaned in French Fields (1880) and Ancient Ballads and Legends of Hindustan (1882)