Emily Eden

Emily Eden (3 March 1797 – 5 August 1869) was an English poet and novelist who gave witty accounts of English life in the early 19th century. She wrote a celebrated account of her travels in India, and two novels that sold well. She was also an accomplished amateur artist. Family ties Born in Westminster, Eden was the seventh daughter of William Eden, 1st Baron Auckland, and his wife Eleanor Elliot. She was the great-great-great-aunt of Prime Minister Anthony Eden. In her late thirties, she and her sister Fanny travelled to India, where her brother George Eden, 1st Earl of Auckland was in residence as Governor-General from 1835 to 1842. She wrote accounts of her time in India, later collected in the volume Up The Country: Letters Written to Her Sister from the Upper Provinces of India (1867). While the emphasis of her Indian writings was on travel descriptions, local colour and details of the ceremonial and social functions that she attended, Eden also provided a perceptive record of the major political events that occurred during her brother's term of office. These included the total destruction of a British and Indian army during the retreat from Kabul in 1842; a disaster for which George Eden was held partly responsible. Fiction Eden wrote two successful novels: The Semi-Detached House (1859) and The Semi-Attached Couple (1860). The latter was written in 1829, but not published until 1860. Both have a comic touch that critics have compared with that of Jane Austen, who was Emily's favourite author. The first of the two has been described as "an accomplished study in the social contrasts of aristocratic style, bourgeois respectability and crass vulgarity."