Ebook: The Oriental Renaissance: Europe's Rediscovery of India and the East, 1680-1880

Raymond Schwab’s massive and far-reaching book, which originally appeared in France in 1950, is a history of European oriental studies—particularly studies of India—in the nineteenth century and their impact on European thought and literature. This sprawling canvas is packed full of scholars, amateurs, adventurers, explorers, and writers. Among the latter are Lamartine, Baudelaire, Heine, Nietzsche, Shelley, and Emerson, all of whom translated or wrote works about the Orient and who, struck by the unique riches of what was being rediscovered before their eyes, created a new literature that has lived in the Western world ever since.