The Master and Fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge, have supported my research over the past six years, first in the form of an External Research Studentship and, from October 1997 onwards, through a ‘Title A’ Research Fellowship. I would like to express my deepest thanks and gratitude to this extraordinarily generous and stimulating institution, which allows its members to spend time in no better fashion than musing about interim paradises. There are other, more specific intellectual debts which I have incurred, and without which this book would never have been written, let alone conceived. I have been fortunate in those who have taught, inspired and guided me intellectually: Malcolm Godden, Simon Keynes, Michael Lapidge, Andy Orchard and Eric Stanley, and my teachers in Presidency College, Calcutta, who first taught me how to articulate my responses to the written word. The greatest pleasure in writing this book lies in being able to thank them all. I would also like to thank Rohini Jayatilaka for her kindness over the years, and Helen Dixon, Sean Miller, Jennifer Neville, Caitríona Ó Dochartaigh, Patrick Sims-Williams, Loredana Teresi, Tessa Webber and Charlie Wright for help, advice and speedy response to queries, often made with little preamble over email. My most fundamental debts are to my parents and my aunts, who, among other things, taught me how to love books and expand my horizons, my brother, for preventing me from taking myself too seriously, and my husband, Mrinal, for sharing with me the fun of intellectual pursuit and the nostalgia of self-imposed exile.