The View across the River: Harriette Colenso and the Zulu Struggle against Imperialism

In this powerful and passionate narrative, Jeff Guy has completed the story he began in his earlier books, The Destruction of the Zulu Kingdom and The Heretic, in showing how, after its conquest, the Zulu kingdom was destroyed by imperial policies of divide and rule and how the Colenso family, especially the Bishop's eldest daughter, Harriette, took the lead in resisting colonial exploitation and imperial domination. Though less well known than her contemporary Olive Schreiner, Harriette was in many ways the greater crusader against colonial injustice. In this moving biography of Harriette, Jeff Guy illuminates both the courage, vision, and insight of this remarkable late-Victorian woman and the nature of late-nineteenth-century imperialism. Based on meticulous research and scrupulous scholarship, this is a riveting account that has as much to say about the political role of women in late-Victorian colonial and metropolitan society as it does about the history of KwaZulu-Natal.