Calcutta in the 19th Century (Company's Days)

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Thirty-five accounts relating to Calcutta before the Mutiny presented in this Calcutta in the 19th Century (Company's Days) will, we hope, enrich our knowledge about our city and serve as original source-materials for historians.

One-third of the present collection has come to us from seven ladies (Emily Eden, Fanny Parks, Maria Graham, Fenton, Emma Roberts, Honoria Lawrence and Hofland), whose hawkish eyes have left out practically nothing worth relating to old Calcutta. There are ten soldiers (Archer, Bacon, Bengalee, Davidson, Huggins, Leigh, Mundy, An Officer; Orlich; and Wallace) who took up pen considering it mightier than the sword. Journalistic accounts coming from the pen of Miss Emma Roberts and William Howard Russell are not particularly investigative as they were not assigned to Calcutta. The missionary accounts (Bishop Heber, Rev. Howard Malcom, a London Missionary and John Hobart Counter of the "Oriental Annual") of Calcutta are not solely concerned with conversions. Historians (Hamilton, Martin and Thornton) have not failed in their duty. We have only three foreign visitors (Victor Jacquemont of France, Leopold von Orlich and Georgian Rafail Danibegashvili), but their accounts give us an insight into many a little known aspect of the history of Calcutta.

We have seldom left out interesting facts relating to Calcutta while making out these extracts from the ponderous volumes of our authors. No liberty has been taken with their original texts. We have given notes wherever it has been deemed necessary.

Acknowledgments are due to the authorities of the National Library of India for their permission to copy the extracts from some of the rare books containing these accounts. Mr. Rathindra Nath Mukherji has again laid us under a deep obligation by not only lending some of the rare books from his collection, but also by publishing this volume. Mr. Sripati Ghosh of Firma took, as usual, upon himself the responsibility of seeing the manuscript through the press.