Eudelin de Jonville: Some Notions about the Island of Ceylon

A translation of a manuscript by Eudelin de Jonville who came to the island of Ceylon in 1798

Available in French and English. de Jonville came to Ceylon as a naturalist and a member of the administrative staff recruited by Frederick North, first British governor of the new colony. During the seven years he spent in Ceylon, he travelled, investigated, questioned, counted and measured, drew, painted and above all wrote an astonishing manuscript.

'The co-author Marie-Hèlène Estève of this new book should be congratulated for her painstaking detailed biographical research on this 'most elusive of the naturalist'. In other words Joseph Marie Eudelin Marve de Jonville has re-emerged from this splendid biographical account of Jonville. The book is replete with seven water color drawings and several other black and white drawings' – Hemantha Situge