This book, first published in 1975, is a comprehensive list of all the books on India, written in English before 1900. It is an invaluable reference source on India of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Apart from the work of professional writers, there are the writings of a cross-section of society from soldiers to scientists. We find dictionaries of obscure dialects written by government officials, descriptions of their travels by visiting clerics, homely details of everyday life by housewives, as well as technical and scientific works written by scholars.

This is an empirical study of just where in Victorian culture the ideology of imperialism left clear traces of itself. The well-written investigations bring to life how certain men thought about the British Empire between the 1830s and 1868.