Fanny Parks

Fanny Parks arrived in India with her husband, a civil servant in the East India Company, in 1822 and remained there until 1845, living first in Calcutta and then in Allahabad. She travelled extensively around India, sketching as she went. Her journal, widely acclaimed on its publication for its accuracy and wealth of detail, is based on a diary the author kept for her mother. An engaging and readable travel memoir of the period, chiefly about India although two plates deal with African subjects. She sailed without her husband up the Jumna River to Agra and up the Ganges to Fatehgarh and spent nearly a year in the Himalayas. Speaking fluent Hindustani, she studied and sketched the people, plant, animal and insect life.