Garden of Kama
 Illustration by Byam Shaw for The Garden of Kama | |
| Author | Laurence Hope |
|---|---|
| Original title | India's Love Lyrics |
| Illustrator | Byam Shaw |
| Cover artist | Byam Shaw |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Subject | Love |
| Genre | Poetry |
| Publisher | Garden City Publishing Company, Inc. |
Publication date | 1942 |
| Media type | Hardcover |
| Pages | 188 |
| Followed by | 'Last Poems' |
The Garden of Kama is a book of lyric poetry published in 1901 and written by Adela Florence Nicolson under the pseudonym Laurence Hope. It was illustrated by Byam Shaw. The poems in the book were falsely given as translations of Indian poets by a man, as she thought the book received much more attention that they would likely have done if she had published them under her own name. Also false was the assertion that the poems in the book were products of Indian culture - they were original works; none was actually a translation.
The poetry in this volume was characteristic of all of Nicolson's poems, making liberal use of the imagery and symbols from the poets of the North-West Frontier of India and the Sufi poets of Persia. The poems are typically about unrequited love and loss.
The book was initially praised upon its released by many prominent poets, Thomas Hardy among them, although some reviewers were uncertain about the authenticity of the translations. James Darmesteter, Professor of Persian at the prestigious College de France, Paris, emabarassingly documented the images used by the supposed frontier bards as being symbols of the latent Sufi nature of their songs. they were later exposed as being original works from the West, although partly inspired by the Sufi.
The book was published in America in 1927 as India's Love Lyrics.
References
- "Violet Nicolson." Marx, Edward. An Encyclopedia of British Women Writers. Ed. Paul Schlueter and June Schlueter. New York: Garland, 1999