Sterne’s Eliza, Some Account of her Life in India : with her Letters written between 1757 and 1774

vi, 200pp. With a plate portrait frontispiece. In cherry red boards with gilt lettering on front and spine. Rough cut page edges. (Boards a little worn, rubbed on corners and spine ends, faded along top and spine). Internally neat, clean, bight and tight barring a little toning on endpapers only. Eliza Draper’s fame rests mainly on her brief but intense with Laurence Sterne in early 1767; Eliza was 24 and Sterne, already prematurely aged and entering the illness that would take his life the following years, flattered her. Whether there friendship exceeded the platonic limits remains doubtful, but however the question of moral culpability may be decided, Eliza has title to further consideration. Her letters – a number of which are published in this volume for the first time – show her have intellectual attainment of no mean order and she wrote with fluency and charm, and her periods in India coincided with the epoch-making change which transformed the East India Company from a trading venture into an imperialistic ruler. Her commentary on such events, as well as on Anglo-Indian life is illuminating.