DigiCat Publishing presents to you this special edition of "Begumbagh: A Tale of the Indian Mutiny" by George Manville Fenn. DigiCat Publishing considers every written word to be a legacy of humankind. Every DigiCat book has been carefully reproduced for republishing in a new modern format. The books are available in print, as well as ebooks. DigiCat hopes you will treat this work with the acknowledgment and passion it deserves as a classic of world literature.

Gautam Chakravarty explores representations of the event which has become known in the British imagination as the 'Indian Mutiny' of 1857 in British popular fiction and historiography. Drawing on a wide range of primary sources including diaries, autobiographies and state papers, Chakravarty shows how narratives of the rebellion were inflected by the concerns of colonial policy and by the demands of imperial self-image. He goes on to discuss the wider context of British involvement in India from 1765 to the 1940s, and engages with constitutional debates, administrative measures, and the early nineteenth-century Anglo-Indian novel. Chakravarty approaches the mutiny from the perspectives of postcolonial theory as well as from historical and literary perspectives to show the extent to which the insurrection took hold of the popular imagination in both Britain and India. The book has a broad interdisciplinary appeal and will be of interest to scholars of English literature, British imperial history, modern Indian history and cultural studies.

‘The punishment for Mutiny,’ said John Nicholson, Commander of the Movable Column, ‘is death’. As India marks 150 years of the 1857 Uprising, this meticulously researched and vivid work recounts a time both tragic and compelling. Many-staged and many-charactered, this volume searches for the key issues, causes and effects, figures and developments that culminated in the massacres of Cawnpore, Satichaura and Bibighar, the ensuing counter-massacres, and the gory retribution dealt out by the British on their subjects. Beginning with an account of the state of the British Raj in 1857, Pramod Nayar moves on the ‘A Gathering Storm’, the strife that led to the Uprising, ‘The Summer of Discontent’, recounting the Mutiny, ‘The Retreat of the Native’ which tells us how the British won back lost ground, and ‘The Raj Rises Again’, explaining the repercussions the Mutiny had on the administrative plans of the empire. He also delves into the real causes of the Uprising, more complex than what conventional history upholds. Detailed descriptions of the Mutiny’s main figures, including Henry Lawrence, John Nicholson, Lord Canning, Nana Sahib, the Rani of Jhansi, and the tragic king of Delhi, Bahadur Shah Zafar, are interspersed with quotes, facts and anecdotes that reanimate the past. An overview and analysis of the Mutiny is flavoured with references to the literature of the time and includes an appendix on how the events of 1857 influenced European literary imagination. Kanpur and Jhansi, violence and counter-violence, heroism and savagery – this every-person’s guide to 1857 captures the most tumultuous years of British India and re-enacts the drama of the first stirrings of nationalism.

First published in 1986, this book sets Kipling firmly in the historical context not only of contemporary India but of prior Anglo-Indian writers about India. Despite his enthusiastic reception in England as ‘revealer of the East’, in India he seems to have been regarded as just one more Anglo-Indian writer. The author demonstrates the traditionalism of Kipling’s use of the themes of Anglo-Indian fiction – themes such as the ‘White Man’s grave’, domestic instability, frustration and loneliness. In particular, Kipling is shown to be writing in a strongly conservative idiom, concentrating on the role of the British hierarchy as the determining factor in a response to India, on British insecurity and fears of a repeat of the 1857 mutiny, and regarding Indian institutions only in so far as they represented a threat to British rule. Conservative critiques of liberalism are also discussed.