Anglo-Indian fiction has generally interested non-Indians more than Indians, hence it is appropriate that Bhupal Singh’s pioneering work should achieve a new impression under the joint imprint of Curzon Press (London) and Rowman & Littlefield (Totowa N.J.). The volume is being distributed in India by Oxford University Press, who originally published the work in 1934. A tell-tale OUP sticker carries the hand-written price of £4.00, perhaps a wise precaution against the pound’s current decline.
All is old in this new impression but the Foreword (the copyright of which is owned by Curzon Press) and a supplementary bibliography which precedes the original author’s preface. In terms of the conventions of book-making, it must be quite unusual for a supplementary bibliography to appear three hundred pages before the bibliography does. It would surely have been far more useful for the prospective buyer if the original bibliography of 1934 had carried a reasonably complete 1934-74 supplement. This would have greatly enhanced the ‘reference volume’ value of the work.