Maria Graham: A Literary Biography By Regina Akel

Chapter 2

A Voyage to India

As she reached the year 1807 of her memoir, ‘Reminiscences’, Maria made an enticing announcement: ‘Another change was now to take place in my life’ (91). Unfortunately, we will never know for certain what she intended to narrate. William Hutchins Callcott, the nephew who collected Maria’s papers and diaries after her death, recorded dramatically at the end of the manuscript, ‘Here the “sick-bed” became a “death-bed” and no more MS could be found’ (ibid.). Her first biographer, Rosamund Brunel Gotch, suggests that by ‘change’ Maria must have meant the journey to India with her father, started at the end of 1808.¹ This is possible, because the journey brought about enduring changes in her life: the first was meeting the man who would become her first husband, the second was the birth of Maria Graham, the author.

The journey from England to India at the time took from five to six months, and the young traveller’s private diary is a vivid personal record of her daily routine, her readings, some events on board, the ports of call, and the character of her fellow passengers.