Synopsis
Sara Jeannette Duncan (who sometimes wrote as Mrs. Everard Cotes) was a Canadian author and journalist. Beginning her career on the "Washington Post," she made history as the first woman to be hired as a professional journalist in Canada, taking a regular position at the "Toronto Globe," and later moving to the "Montreal Star," where she was the paper's Parliamentary correspondent. She married Everard Cotes, a journalist and museum curator based in Calcutta. During her long residence with her husband in India she made a considerable reputation as a novelist of Anglo-Indian life. Duncan's style can be compared to contemporary satirists such as Stephen Leacock and Thomas Carlyle.
"A Pool in the Desert" is a collection of stories by Duncan, including "A Mother in India," "An Impossible Ideal," "The Hesitation of Miss Anderson," and "The Pool in the Desert." They draw in part from her long residence in India with her husband, and are stories of wives of officers in the Indian Army. "A Mother in India" recounts the trials of an officer's wife, who must send her child back to relatives in England. The title story covers a period of years in a wife's life, and the changes wrought by the arrival of a new officer and his second wife, as they become acclimated to India and accepted by the community.
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Review
"Readers who enjoy Sara Jeannette Duncan's artful insights into the manners, coterie culture, and presumptuous biases of Anglo-India will delight in the ironies of these stories. Duncan's 'English, ' wrapped up in their institutions and their pride, consider themselves above the ordinary here; while her watchful narrators think they can stand apart from the social emptiness and moral failings they observe, they discover, to their discomfort, that they are part of what they see--as eager for happiness, as susceptible to humiliation, as open to both judgment and understanding."--W.H. New
"The Pool in the Desert represents the climate of desire that defined the New Woman, and that animated Sara Jeannette Duncan in her striving for personal and professional achievement. This new edition includes valuable background information which situates the book within the discourses of imperial-colonial politics and of feminist resistance, and as part of the vibrant international context of Canadian writing at the turn of the century."--Misao Dean
"Readers who enjoy Sara Jeannette Duncan's artful insights into the manners, coterie culture, and presumptuous biases of Anglo-India will delight in the ironies of these stories. Duncan's 'English, ' wrapped up in their institutions and their pride, consider themselves above the ordinary here; while her watchful narrators think they can stand apart from the social emptiness and moral failings they observe, they discover, to their discomfort, that they are part of what they see--as eager for happiness, as susceptible to humiliation, as open to both judgment and understanding" -- W.H. New, University of British Columbia
"The Pool in the Desert represents the climate of desire that defined the New Woman, and that animated Sara Jeannette Duncan in her striving for personal and professional achievement. This new edition includes valuable background information which situates the book within the discourses of imperial-colonial politics and of feminist resistance, and as part of the vibrant international context of Canadian writing at the turn of the century." -- Misao Dean, University of Victoria
"Readers who enjoy Sara Jeannette Duncan's artful insights into the manners, coterie culture, and presumptuous biases of Anglo-India will delight in the ironies of these stories. Duncan's 'English, ' wrapped up in their institutions and their pride, consider themselves above the ordinary here; while her watchful narrators think they can stand apart from the social emptiness and moral failings they observe, they discover, to their discomfort, that they are part of what they see--as eager for happiness, as susceptible to humiliation, as open to both judgment and understanding" -- W.H. New, University of British Columbia
"The Pool in the Desert represents the climate of desire that defined the New Woman, and that animated Sara Jeannette Duncan in her striving for personal and professional achievement. This new edition includes valuable background information which situates the book within the discourses of imperial-colonial politics and of feminist resistance, and as part of the vibrant international context of Canadian writing at the turn of the century." -- Misao Dean, University of Victoria
From the Back Cover
In The Pool in the Desert, first published in 1903, Sara Jeannette Duncan explores the impact of isolation on the small British communities of Victorian India. In the four stories collected here--"The Pool in the Desert," "A Mother in India," "An Impossible Ideal," and "The Hesitation of Miss Anderson"--Duncan's women have certain freedoms living amidst the reaches of Empire, but they also must negotiate their way through a landscape dominated by the constraints of small military societies. The stories that result combine a delicacy of manners and movement that recalls Henry James, with a wit and sharp eye for small town foibles that bring Stephen Leacock to mind.
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