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Flora Annie Steel (2 April 1847 – 12 April 1929) was a writer who lived in British India for 22 years. She was noted especially for books set in the Indian sub-continent or connected with it. Her novel On the Face of the Waters (1896) describes incidents in the Indian Mutiny.

Flora Annie Steel
Flora Annie Steel, c. 1903
Born(1847-04-02)2 April 1847
Sudbury, Middlesex, England[1]
Died12 April 1929(1929-04-12) (aged 82)
Minchinhampton, Gloucestershire, England[1]
OccupationWriter
Period19th century
GenreHistory, Fiction, Children's Literature

Personal life


She was born Flora Annie Webster at Sudbury Priory, Sudbury, Middlesex, the sixth child of George Webster.[1] Her mother, Isabella MacCallum, was an heiress.[2]: 1  In 1867 she married Henry William Steel, a member of the Indian Civil Service, and they lived in India until 1889,[3] chiefly in the Punjab, with which most of her books are connected.[4] She grew deeply interested in native Indian life and began to urge educational reforms on the government of India. Mrs Steel herself became an Inspectress of Government and Aided Schools in the Punjab and also worked with John Lockwood Kipling, Rudyard Kipling's father, fostering Indian arts and crafts.[5] When her husband's health was weak, Flora Annie Steel took over some of his responsibilities.

She died at her daughter's house in Minchinhampton, Gloucestershire on 12 April 1929.[6] Her biographers include Violet Powell[7][2] and Daya Patwardhan.[8][9]


Writing


Flora was interested in relating to all classes of Indian society. The birth of her daughter gave her a chance to interact with local women and learn their language. She encouraged the production of local handicrafts and collected folk-tales, a collection of which she published in 1894.

Her interest in schools and the education of women gave her insight into native life and character.[4] A year before leaving India, she co-authored and published The Complete Indian Housekeeper and Cook, which gave detailed directions to European women on all aspects of household management in India.

In 1889 the family moved back to Britain, and she continued her writing there. Some of her best work, according to the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica, is contained in two collections of her short stories, From the Five Rivers and Tales of the Punjab.[4]

She also wrote a popular history of India.[4] John F. Riddick describes Steel's The Hosts of the Lord as one of the "three significant works" produced by Anglo-Indian writers on Indian missionaries, along with The Old Missionary (1895) by William Wilson Hunter and Idolatry (1909) by Alice Perrin.[10] Among her other literary associates in India was Bithia Mary Croker.[11]


Bibliography


Tales of the Punjab (1894), illustrated by John Lockwood Kipling
Tales of the Punjab (1894), illustrated by John Lockwood Kipling

References


  1. Brown, Susan; Patricia Clements & Isobel Grundy (2006). "Flora Annie Steel entry: Overview screen". Orlando: Women's Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present. Cambridge University Press Online. Retrieved 28 November 2014.
  2. Violet Powell (May 1981). Flora Annie Steel, Novelist of India. Heinemann. ISBN 9780434599578.
  3. Margaret MacMillan (2007). Women of the Raj: The Mothers, Wives, and Daughters of the British Empire in India. Random House Trade Paperbacks. pp. 245–. ISBN 978-0-8129-7639-7.
  4. Chisholm 1911.
  5. The Indian Biographical Dictionary (1915)/Steel, Mrs. Flora Annie  – via Wikisource.
  6. Orlando. Retrieved 31 October 2015
  7. Mannsaker, Frances M. (Autumn 1982). "Flora Annie Steel, Novelist of India by Violet Powell". Victorian Studies. 26 (1): 105–106. JSTOR 3827506.
  8. Parry, Benita (April 1967). "A Star of India: Flora Annie Steel, Her Works and Times by Daya Patwardhan". The Modern Language Review. 62 (2): 324–325. doi:10.2307/3723865. JSTOR 3723865.
  9. Daya Patwardhan (1963). A Star of India: Flora Annie Steel, Her Works and Times. Sole agents: A. V. Griha Prakashan, Poona.
  10. John F. Riddick (1 January 2006). The History of British India: A Chronology. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 179. ISBN 978-0-313-32280-8.
  11. Douglas Sladen: "Lady Authors", in: Twenty Years of My Life (London: Constable, 1915), p. 120 ff.
  12. "The Hosts of the Lord by Flora Annie Steel". The Sewanee Review. 9 (1): 101–102. January 1901. JSTOR 27528148.
  13. Willcox, Louise Collier (19 April 1907). "A Sovereign Remedy by Flora Annie Steel". The North American Review. 184 (613): 861–863. JSTOR 25105855.
  14. Meston (23 November 1929). "Flora Annie Steel". The Spectator Archive. p. 39. Retrieved 28 November 2014.


Library resources about
Flora Annie Steel
By Flora Annie Steel


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