Letters of a Javanese Princess

When you sail from Chambra fifteen thousand miles on a course between south and southeast, you come to a great island called Java. And experienced mariners of those Islands who know the matter well say that it is the greatest Island in the world and has a compass of three thousand miles. It is subject to a great King and tributary to no one else in the world. The people are idolaters. The Island is of surpassing wealth, producing black pepper, nutmegs, spikenard, galingale, cubebs, cloves and all other kinds of spices. This Island is also frequented by a vast amount of shipping, and by merchants who buy and sell costly goods from which they reap great profit. Indeed, the treasure of this Island is so great as to be past telling. Marco Polo.
The letters of Raden Adjeng Kartini were first published at the Hague in 1911 under the title, Door Duisternis tot Licht, (from Darkness into Light). They were collected and edited by Dr. J.H. Abendanon, former Minister of Education and Industry for Netherland-India. Many of the letters were written to him and to his wife Moedertje. Dr. Abendanon has given me permission to publish this English version, which is a selection comprising about two-thirds of the original book.
I also wish to acknowledge my debt to Dr. Leonard Van Noppen, who, when Queen Wilhelmina Professor of Dutch Literature at Columbia University, first called my attention to the book and told me something of Kartini's story .
A.L.S.
When the letters of Raden Adjeng Kartini were published in Holland, they aroused much interest and awakened a warm sympathy for the writer. She was the young daughter of a Javanese Regent, one of the princesses who grow up and blossom in sombre obscurity and seclusion, leading their monotonous and often melancholy lives within the confines of the Kaboepaten, as the high walled Regent's palaces are called.
The thought of India, or as we now say, perhaps more happily, Java, had a strange fascination for me even as a child. I was charmed by the weird mystery of its stories, which frightened even while they charmed me. Although I was born in Holland, our family traditions had been rooted in Java. My father began his official career there as a Judge, and my mother was the daughter of a Governor General, while my older brothers had followed their father's example and were officials under the Colonial Government.