Other editions of book The Village in the Jungle

Written two decades before George Orwell's much better known anti-imperialist novel Burmese Days, The Village in the Jungle has been described by Nick Rankin as "the first novel in English literature to be written from the indigenous point of view rather than the coloniser's." Victoria Glendinning described it as "a foundational novel in the Sri Lankan literary canon", but the novel remains little known in the wider world.The Village in the Jungle is a novel by Leonard Woolf, published in 1913, based on his experiences as a colonial civil servant in British-controlled Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) in the early years of the 20th century. Ground-breaking in Western fiction for being written from the native rather than the colonial point of view, it is also an influential work of Sri Lankan literature.The book was received favorably by critics at the time of publication:"‘The Village in the Jungle’ is at once the most faithful, the most true, and the most understanding presentment of Oriental peasant life that has ever been placed before Western readers by a European. Written with first-hand knowledge of the people and their surroundings, with real psychological insight and sympathy, this book not only gives a picture of village life in the less favored portions of Ceylon which is true in every detail, but it affords to the reader a convincing explanation of why it is as it is." -Blackwood's Magazine"... Rich in description of the Ceylonese jungle and its romantic ruins." -Literary Digest International Book ReviewLeonard Woolf worked for the British Ceylon Civil Service in Sri Lanka for seven years after graduating from Cambridge University in 1904. In Cambridge Woolf had become part of the Bloomsbury Group. He became Assistant Government Agent in Sri Lanka, dealing with a variety of administrative and judicial issues. The district he was in charge of had a population of 100,000 people. Books he took with him to Sri Lanka included the complete works of Voltaire. Woolf also kept a comprehensive diary while there, and later said that his experiences in the country led to him adopting liberal political views and becoming an opponent of imperialism. He wrote The Village in the Jungle, his first novel, after he returned from Sri Lanka to England in 1911 while he was courting his future wife the famous novelist Virginia Woolf. He dedicated the novel to her.Leonard Sidney Woolf (1880 – 1969) was an English political theorist, author, publisher and civil servant, and husband of author Virginia Woolf. In 1919 Woolf became editor of the International Review. He also edited the international section of the Contemporary Review from 1920 to 1922. He was literary editor of The Nation and Atheneum, generally referred to simply as The Nation, from 1923 to 1930), and joint founder and editor of The Political Quarterly from 1931 to 1959), and for a time he served as secretary of the Labour Party's advisory committees on international and colonial questions.In 1960 Woolf revisited Sri Lanka and was surprised at the warmth of the welcome he received, and even the fact that he was still remembered. Woolf accepted an honorary doctorate from the then-new University of Sussex in 1964 and in 1965 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

2014 Reprint of 1913 Edition. Full facsimile of the original edition, not reproduced with Optical Recognition Software. This almost forgotten book, first published in 1913, is a remarkable work because it is the first novel in English literature to be written from the indigenous point of view rather than that of the colonizers. The village described in the book is "Beddagama" and consists of 10 crude mud huts in a hot dry clearing hacked from the inexorable jungle in the south of Sri Lanka, the island then known as Ceylon. We enter into the mindset of rural people, feeling the terrors and joys of their spiritual beliefs. We also come to see how, in the material world, they are continually oppressed by debts to money-lenders and unbreakable obligations to village elders. Lust and greed start a chain of tragic events which, compounded by the ignorance and misunderstanding of judges, leads to the destruction of Silindu's family, and the swallowing up of their homes by the relentless and hostile scrub. Leonard Woolf is the husband of Virginia Woolf and founder of the Hogarth Press.

This novel, set in Ceylon, follows the lives of a handful of villagers hacking out a fragile existence in a jungle where indiscriminate growth, indifferent fate and malevolent neighbours constantly threaten to overwhelm them.This book, set mostly in Sri Lankan jungle, follows the inhabitants of the village of Beddegama. It is atmospheric and gripping. Most of the inhabitants live hand to mouth and are heavily in debt to the headman, who doles out favours according to his whims.A young Leonard Woolf arrived in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) an innocent imperialist, and he left it several years later with a great love of the country and its peoples. His social conscience had sharpened, and he was all too aware that the imperial project was meaningless and harmful in the lives of the Sinhalese, Tamils and Moors.The story of Village in the Jungle is full of acrimony. It is disgusting to see that human beings are subjected to such levels of torture and misery by their own neighbors and the administrators. Unfortunately the story of the novel is not unique only to Baddegama. It is the story of the rural Sri Lanka during colonial times. The story of the rural villages is not that different even today with all the advancement of technology and democracy we are supposed to enjoy.

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This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curated for quality. Quality assurance was conducted on each of these books in an attempt to remove books with imperfections introduced by the digitization process. Though we have made best efforts - the books may have occasional errors that do not impede the reading experience. We believe this work is culturally important and have elected to bring the book back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide.

The village was called Beddagama, which means the village in the jungle. It lay in the low country or plains, midway between the sea and the great mountains which seem, far away to the north, to rise like a long wall straight up from the sea of trees. It was in, and of, the jungle; the air and smell of the jungle lay heavy upon it the smell of hot air, of dust, and of dry and powdered leaves and sticks. I ts beginning and its end was in the jungle, which stretched away from it on all sides unbroken, north and south and east and west, to the blue line of the hills and to the sea. The jungle surrounded it, overhung it, continually pressed in upon it. It stood at the door of the houses, always ready to press in upon the compounds and open spaces, to break through the mud huts, and to choke up the tracks and paths. It was only by yearly clearing with axe and katty that it could be kept out.(Typographical errors above are due to OCR software and don't occur in the book.)About the Publisher Forgotten Books is a publisher of historical writings, such as: Philosophy, Classics, Science, Religion, History, Folklore and Mythology.Forgotten Books' Classic Reprint Series utilizes the latest technology to regenerate facsimiles of historically important writings. Careful attention has been made to accurately preserve the original format of each page whilst digitally enhancing the aged text. Read books online for free at

‘All jungles are evil, but no jungle is more evil than that which lay about the village of Beddagama.’ In a literary career spanning more than 60 years the highly prolific man of letters Leonard Woolf published hardly any fiction. Of the little he did produce, by far the most important was The Village in the Jungle (1913), a debut novel set in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) of such literary accomplishment that it should have propelled him on a career to match his great contemporaries D H Lawrence or Thomas Hardy. Instead Woolf chose to devote himself to publishing fiction by his more famous wife, Virginia, while running the famous Hogarth Press. Despite being virtually unknown The Village in the Jungle is an important classic, rare among English novels of the Edwardian era. While most take the viewpoint of the coloniser, Woolf tells his tale of native life in a colonial outpost from the point of view of the colonised. It is also a tale of superstition and murder set against a backdrop of the jungle that threatens to swallow everything up in its path. The Village in the Jungle is the work of a young writer of immense skill and maturity. His flawlessly lyrical and intense prose brings the jungle chillingly to life, while his innate understanding of the Sinhalese people garnered from seven years as a colonial administrator on the island gives the novel real authenticity. Widely regarded as one of the best books in English about Ceylon, The Village in the Jungle is regarded in Sri Lanka today as a national treasure. Despite the early success of The Village in the Jungle Woolf’s only other fiction about Ceylon is a slim volume of three short stories called Stories of the East (1921), also available from Classic Travel Books.

This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curated for quality. Quality assurance was conducted on each of these books in an attempt to remove books with imperfections introduced by the digitization process. Though we have made best efforts - the books may have occasional errors that do not impede the reading experience. We believe this work is culturally important and have elected to bring the book back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. This text refers to the Bibliobazaar edition.

Excerpt from The Village in the JungleVillage, a wall which, if the axe were spared, would creep in and smother and blot out the village itself.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

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