An early publication of the Irish writer, Sydney Owenson (Lady Morgan after 1812), this 1811 novel was admired by Percy and Mary Shelley, Sir Walter Scott, Lord Byron, and other contemporaries. The relationship between gender and colonialism in the novel has drawn scholarly interest since the late twentieth century, Owenson representing India through multiple colonial lenses. Although the novel is set in the seventeenth century during the conflict between Portuguese Franciscan and Jesuit orders, vying for control in India, Owenson informs the work with references to nineteenth-century Anglo-India and its parallels with the British domination of Ireland, a lifelong concern of hers. Although the eponymous missionary, Hilarion, is the apparent protagonist of this novel, Owenson endows Luxima, the Hindu priestess, whom the missionary aims to convert, with a complex subjectivity. Luxima was so beloved by Owenson’s contemporaries that she retitled the novel Luxima, the Prophetess in her 1859 edition, shortly before Owenson’s death. Engagement with the sentimental literary tradition and colonialism characterizes this early period of Owenson’s career that also includes the 1806 novel, The Wild Irish Girl, a libretto for an opera, and poetry. Later, after Owenson became Lady Morgan through marriage, she wrote travelogues and controversial political essays, her novels becoming more overtly satirical. Owenson’s writing (as Lady Morgan) in this later phase defends Irish nationalism, decrying social inequities and women’s exclusion from politics.