Suchitra Choudhury - Textile Orientalisms: Cashmere and Paisley Shawls in British Literature and Culture

Textile Orientalisms

Series in Victorian Studies

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Suchitra Choudhury, Textile Orientalisms: Cashmere and Paisley Shawls in British Literature and Culture

Textile Orientalisms

Cashmere and Paisley Shawls in British Literature and Culture

SUCHITRA CHOUDHURY

OHIO UNIVERSITY PRESS

ATHENS

Ohio University Press, Athens, Ohio 45701

ohioswallow.com

2023 by Ohio University Press

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Choudhury, Suchitra, 1967 author.

Title: Textile orientalisms : Cashmere and Paisley shawls in British literature and culture / Suchitra Choudhury.

Description: Athens : Ohio University Press, [2023] | Series: Series in Victorian studies | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2022037324 (print) | LCCN 2022037325 (ebook) | ISBN 9780821425008 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780821447857 (pdf)

Subjects: LCSH: Shawls in literature. | English literature19th centuryHistory and criticism. | English literatureHistory and criticism. | Fashion in literature. | Material culture in literature. | Imperialism in literature. | Orientalism in literature. | IndiaIn literature. | Cashmere shawlsGreat BritainHistory. | ShawlsGreat BritainHistory. | LCGFT: Literary criticism.

Classification: LCC PR468.S49 C48 2022 (print) | LCC PR468.S49 (ebook) | DDC 820.9/3564dc23/eng/20220923

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022037324

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022037325

To the memory of my parents, Ashok Dev Choudhuri and Bela Chaudhuri

Contents

Illustrations

Acknowledgments

This book has taken a long time to materialize and has gathered around several friendships and scholarly influences. My first thanks are to Nigel Leask for his fine supervision of my doctoral study at the University of Glasgow. Professor Leasks extraordinary intellectual expertise and generosity have been key to this research; I am also very grateful to him for suggesting its title. Concurrently, I am thankful to Kate Teltscher and Mary Ellis Gibson for their expert advice, and not least for creating that memorable moment at my viva voce examination, as they came into my mild shock and delightdressed in Indian shawls!

I am particularly thankful to Kate Teltscher for reading through the first chapters of the book. Andrew Radford, Andrew Rudd, Christine Ferguson, and Murray Pittock also kindly read parts of the manuscript. Beyond the UK, I would like to thank Betsy Bolton for her extensive comments on my writing on Inchbald. Susan Hiner, too, has been exceptionally kind in reassuring my references to French literature and for giving helpful advice on acquiring images for publication.

Looking back on the time before I moved to England, I would like to thank my friends and colleagues in All India Radio, Delhi. I am thinking of Kiran Misra, Pradeep Kumar, Anubha Rohatgi, Subhadra Ramachandran, Linda Mukherjee, Vijay Daniels, and the late Barun Haldar, all of whom made the business of presenting newsand musicso very happy and enjoyable. At Delhi University, I am grateful to Professor R. W. Desai, whose scholarship and unfailing kindness have shaped generations of students well beyond Shakespeare studies. Thanks are also due to Rajiva Varma, Shormishtha Panja, Sumanyu Satpathy, Bhim S. Dahiya, Gulshan Taneja, and Neerja Chand for their warmth and kindnesses. Old friends from Lady Irwin School and Hindu College, Delhi, deserve corresponding mention: Arti Minocha, Natasha Agrawal, Sushila Bahl, Cathy Anubha Banerji, Bipasa Biswas, Suneepa Das, Kakoli Roy, Indrani Roy, Mahua Ghosh, Shompa Bhattacharya, and the Irwinites WhatsApp group more widelycheers to you all.

There is a very special place reserved here for my beloved friend Piu, Kakoli Bhattacharya, whose presence continues to shape my thinking and being on a daily basis. Id like to thank Michael Safi at The Guardian for writing an extended and touching obituary of her as COVID-19 devastated Delhi in April 2021. Sumita Basu Majumdar, I am fortunate to have you as my friend. Tulika B. Mukherji, Sharmistha Gangopadhyay, Linda Rae Dornan, Mira Knoche, Violetta Trofimova, Margaret Mackay, Himanshu Thakkar, Stephen Barker, Tim and Sharmila Shetty, Partha Choudhury, Pampa Chakravarti, Subrata Saha, the Carlisle Indian Divas, Ammad Ali, Greta-Mary Hair, Claire Wood, and the late Manas Kumar Audhya, thank you all for your enthusiasm about my work.

Iain Hutchinson, you have been a friend and mentor for so many years, I remain indebted. Thanks to Piyumi Ranasinghe for her astounding friendship and for the opportunities of intellectual and expressive conversations that began so many years ago at Glasgow. Ranjana Saha, thank you for your love and long friendship over the years. Vivien Williams, James Medley Morris, Francesca Anniballithank you for the many wonderful moments of friendship and fun. Kang Yen Chiu, Sadia Zulfiqar, Victoria Woolner, Michael Morris, and others at the Scottish Romantic Research group led by Alex Benchimol and Gerard McKeever at the University of Glasgow also contributed to my work in so many memorable moments.

I would like to thank Margaret Mackay for her generous gift of a nineteenth-century Paisley shawl. Warm thanks also to Sadia Zulfiqar, Sipra Saha, Madhulika Chatterjee, and the lovely Anweshaa Ghosh for their graceful shawl gifts.

I would like to thank Michael Morris and Emma Bond for their brilliant project on Transnational Scotland. At the Victoria and Albert Museum, Dundee, Meredith More, Mhairi Maxwell, Russell Dornan, and James Wily formed good company for decolonizing objects. Thanks are also due to Aileen Strachan, and Dan Coughlan at the Paisley Museum. The Association of Dress Historians awarded me the Aileen Ribeiro Image Grant 2021, for which I remain very grateful. The Paul Mellon Centre and the Design History Society have also funded parts of this research in earlier years. Ellen Filor and Jonathan Eacott generously shared their archival work on shawls; and Fiona Jardine, thank you for organizing so many events centered on Paisley shawls and making me feel at home in them.