This anthology illustrates the progression of imperialist and feminist attitudes from different women's perspectives. On one hand there were women like Josephine Butler, Millicent Fawcett and Dorothea Beale who never went to India but regarded the emancipation of Indian women as an extension of their own domestic campaigns.

Their writing contrasts with that of Mary Carpenter, Flora Annie Steel and Annette Ackroyd Beveridge who visited or lived and worked in India, engaging in activities specifically related to women's interests and whose lives and political sympathies sometimes developed in different directions from mainstream British feminism.

Alongside these two groups were women like Florence Nightingale, Harriet Martineau and Annie Besant whose interests were not specifically focused on the emancipation of Indian women but rather on colonial reform, politics and Indian people in general.

Intended as a reader for both women's studies and cultural and historical studies, as well as for the general reader, these texts include interesting evaluations of Indian social history and Indian women, while on a different level they provide a valuable insight into the perspectives and cultural backgrounds of the writers themselves.