Forgotten Women of Calcutta, Christine McCauley MsPRESS

I found this small book to be unexpectedly moving. The book pays homage, via photographs taken in the South Park Street Cemetery in Kolkata, to the remarkable women who undertook the voyage to India in the Eighteenth and early Nineteenth Centuries as part of families involved in the work of the (British) East India Company. The average life expectancy in India was not much more than 15 months for these women.

I illustrate one page opening which shows the plaque on the monument commemorating the life and early death of Elizabeth Jane Barwell, ‘the celebrated Miss Sanderson’. Elizabeth Jane Sanderson was born in Nova Scotia, Canada and a lively account of her life and impact on arrival in India in the late Eighteenth Century can be read here: https://www.thisday.app/en/details/the-most-beautiful-girl-in-kolkata.html

An A6 book printed in an edition of 36, each numbered and signed by the artist and publisher Christine McCauley. Single sewn section, hardback binding in ‘antique’ buckram, foil blocked. Printed three and two colour risograph onto Zerkall paper, interleaved with glassine. Price is £30.

I had not come across the risograph printing technique before, and I understand that it may be considered in effect a digital screen printing method. The processing and printing of the photographs has resulted in a melancholy, ‘old world’ atmosphere which contrasts the grey solidity of the tombs with the bright colours of the trees and plants in the cemetery.

That is an excellent book, I have it as well. I also have and like her Forgotten Women book on the Peterloo Massacre. She said recently that another Forgotten Women book is in the works.

Just received an email that Christine McCauley has a new fine press book coming out. It's titled Burma Bound and is being released in a limitation of 38 at £460 each. Hopefully more details will be made public on her website after the book's premier at Maggs Bros. Ltd. on November 23rd.