Letters of an Indian Judge to an English Gentlewoman

First published in 1934, this book purports to be the letters of an Indian lawyer who eventually becomes a judge, to an English woman he met only once at a party. The letters reveal the prejudices common in India and Burma at the time and the writer's firm belief that Colonial rule by sympathetic English men would be the best thing fior these countries. We only have the Indian's letters to read, which are also full of his family, his traditional superstitious wife, and his sons, one of whom goes to Cambridge like his father. I started this book hoping to get a slice of life as it was in Colonial times from the other point of view, of one of its inhabitants. Having a father who grew up in Burma and India at the same time this book was show more written, I had some familiarity with the era, so I could not shake off the feeling that these letters must have been heavily edited. I also could not quite believe that a memsahib of the Raj would have kept up such a long correspondence. And so, it turns out that the book was written by Dorothy Black, a successful romance writer. She did spend many years in Burma and was not typical of the English women there, as she hated the snobbishness and formality. I think she wrote this book in the persona of the English woman at the party, making up the judge's letters to reflect her political views. Views that were very pro Colonial nonetheless, and perhaps a little condescendingly paternalistic. But I am looking at this eighty years later, after WWIl, after Independence and after Burma's military dictatorship and its demise. Interestingly, my copy is from 1978, a year after she died and it does not credit her as the author although the book has been re-issued under her name. show less

As the title implies, this book consists of a series of letters written by an Indian judge to an English lady. We do not see her replies to his letters, but we do see his responses to comments she has made. This gives us the sense of being a voyeur, peeking into the lives of the judge and his family. This book has an old-world charm to it that you rarely, if ever, see in modern novels and, lacking all the swearing, sex and gore so common to todays novels, it makes a nice change for evening reading.

A simply brilliant book one of my very favourites