Iris Macfarlane (22 July 1922 – 12 February 2007) was a British writer. Her memoir, ''Daughters of the Empire: A Memoir of Life and Times in the British Raj'' covers her life as the wife of a wealthy

tea Tea is an aromatic beverage prepared by pouring hot or boiling water over cured or fresh leaves of '' Camellia sinensis'', an evergreen shrub native to East Asia which probably originated in the borderlands of southwestern China and north ...

planter in

Assam Assam (; ) is a state in northeastern India, south of the eastern Himalayas along the Brahmaputra and Barak River valleys. Assam covers an area of . The state is bordered by Bhutan and Arunachal Pradesh to the north; Nagaland and Manipur ...

in northeast

British India The provinces of India, earlier presidencies of British India and still earlier, presidency towns, were the administrative divisions of British governance on the Indian subcontinent. Collectively, they have been called British India. In one ...

. With her son, the noted anthropologist and historian

Alan Macfarlane Alan Donald James Macfarlane (born 20 December 1941 in Shillong, Meghalaya, India) is an anthropologist and historian, and a Professor Emeritus of King's College, Cambridge. He is the author or editor of 20 books and numerous articles on th ...

, she wrote ''The Empire of Tea'' (2004), a history of tea. In 1976, Macfarlane published ''The Mouth of the Night'', a collection of tales from the ''

Popular Tales of the West Highlands ''Popular Tales of the West Highlands'' is a four-volume collection of fairy tales, collected and published by John Francis Campbell, and often translated from Gaelic. Alexander Carmichael was one of the main contributors. The collection in four ...

'' translated from

Gaelic Gaelic is an adjective that means "pertaining to the Gaels". As a noun it refers to the group of languages spoken by the Gaels, or to any one of the languages individually. Gaelic languages are spoken in Ireland, Scotland, the Isle of Man, and Ca ...

. She also wrote on historical topics in ''

History Today ''History Today'' is an illustrated history magazine. Published monthly in London since January 1951, it presents serious and authoritative history to as wide a public as possible. The magazine covers all periods and geographical regions and pub ...

'' during the 1960s and 70s.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Macfarlane, Iris 1922 births 2007 deaths British women historians 20th-century British historians British people in colonial India