Research Catalog

Woolf in Ceylon : an imperial journey in the shadow of Leonard Woolf, 1904-1911

Title: Woolf in Ceylon : an imperial journey in the shadow of Leonard Woolf, 1904-1911 / Christopher Ondaatje.
Author: Ondaatje, Christopher.
Publication: Toronto : HarperCollins, 2005.

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Status	Format	Access	Call Number	Item Location
Request for On-site Use Request Scan How do I pick up this item and when will it be ready?	Text	Use in library	DS489 .O64 2005	Off-site

Details

Description

xi, 326 pages : illustrations (some color), color map; 27 cm

Summary

Leonard Woolf was born in London in 1880. He spent five years at Trinity College, Cambridge where he began lasting friendships with men such as Lytton Strachey, E.M. Forster and John Maynard Keynes. In 1904, Woolf applied to join the home civil service but failed the exam. Instead, he was sent to Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) as a cadet in the Ceylon civil service, joining the small group of white administrators who ruled the colony. There he remained for nearly seven years. In this book Christopher Ondaatje, who was born and brought up in the island, follows in the footsteps of Woolf. Drawing on his personal experience of Ceylon and empire, he compares the way of life during imperial days with that of the post-colonial era. We learn as much about the country and its people and their transformation of the country during the past century as we do about the man who used his colonial career to become one of the leading English men of letters of the twentieth century. Ondaatje's sensitive descriptions, illustrated with period and modern photographs, tell the compelling story of Woolf's sojourn in Ceylon and his developing disillusionment with the British colonial system.

Subject

Genre/Form

Biographies.

Bibliography (note)

Includes bibliographical references (p. 311-313) and index.

ISBN

0002007185
9780002007184
0006395252
9780006395256

LCCN

2006361241
9780002007184
9780006395256

OCLC

ocm60670220
60670220
SCSB-14513653

Owning Institutions

Princeton University Library