The prolonged engagement between Britain and India for over two centuries has resulted in interdependence through interactions in a variety of spheres. These transactions have led to a dialogic, two-way process, not always unwelcome. The present collection of studies under review, competently edited by Shafquat Towheed, is part of the Studies in English Literature series under the General Editorship of Koray Melikoglu. Most of the papers offer new insights into the complex web of relationships between the colonizers and the colonized from a postcolonial perspective. Special attention has been paid to some of the lesser known writers of the 18^th century - especially, women playwrights like Hannah Cowley (A Day in Turkey; or, The Russian Slaves), Elizabeth Inchbald (The Mogul Tale; or, The Descent of a Balloon) and Frances Burney (A Busy Day; or, An Arrival from India), and less known novelist like Marie Correlli (The Sorrows of Satan and Barabbas).

The first two papers examine the possibilities and the inevitable limitations of the attempts to explain the complexities of India to the readers of the Romantic period, through a discussion of the trial of Warren Hastings and the presentation of the images of juggernaut in missionary writings, as well as an incisive analysis of Maturin's Melmoth the Wanderer. The attempt to equate the anti-Catholic gothic fiction with the heated anti-Hindu rhetoric of Evangelical polemic is revelative of the real intentions of the colonizer, who reviles the subjects and their religion, which for Buchanan and Martyn, was an obstacle to be removed, and the people were "lost souls in need of Christian salvation".

interdependence, interactions, transactions, perspective, inevitable, complexities, missionary, revelative, colonizer, obstacle