author
Montague Massey
A lively eyewitness to old Calcutta, he wrote from long personal experience about a city changing fast under British rule. His best-known book opens a window onto everyday colonial life, memory, and urban transformation.
1 Audiobook
Recollections of Calcutta for over Half a Century
by Montague Massey
About the author
Montague Massey is known for Recollections of Calcutta for over Half a Century, an illustrated memoir first published in 1918. In it, he looks back on Calcutta from his first arrival in the 1860s and describes how the city, its streets, buildings, and social world changed over the decades.
In the book's introduction, Massey says the project grew out of conversations with Walter Exley of The Statesman staff, and that early versions of his reminiscences appeared in that newspaper in July and August before being expanded into book form. He also notes that the volume was issued for the benefit of the Red Cross Fund and dedicated to Lady Carmichael, founder of the Bengal Women's War Fund.
Very little biographical information about Massey appears to be readily available beyond what can be gathered from his own book and library listings. What does come through clearly is his value as a firsthand observer: his writing preserves details of colonial Calcutta that later readers might otherwise know only through official histories or scattered archives.