Confessions of a Thug

by Philip Meadows Taylor

Overview

During the summer of 1839, Queen Victoria heard of a soon-to-be-published novel, which was going to expose a gruesome aspect of her Indian dominions. Intrigued, she summoned Richard Bentley and demanded to see page proofs. Duly delivered to the Queen were the first chapters of a compelling account of ritual murder committed by a thrilling, dark-eyed strangler named Ameer Ali, a character said-to-be based on a real criminal called Feringhea. Later that year, Confessions of a Thug, became the first best-selling Anglo-Indian novel. Interestingly, this work of literature is a part of history as it established the word ""thug"" in the English language. Confessions of a Thug (1839) is a remarkable novel that recounts the life of a thug named Ameer Ali. In the pour of a confession to a white 'sahib', the imprisoned Ameer Ali narrates his life as a devoted follower of Thuggee, a practice of murder and robbery performed in the name of a religious cult. This novel offers a strikingly vivid and thrilling experience written in a simple, straight forward English, which any reader of modern imaginative literature will have absolutely no trouble reading.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9789390697731
Publisher:	Pharos Books Private Limited
Publication date:	10/11/2022
Pages:	646
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 1.43(d)

About the Author

Philip Meadows Taylor

Kim A. Wagner is Professor of Global and Imperial History at Queen Mary, University of London. His research is situated at the cusp of Imperial and Global history, focussing on knowledge, crime and resistance in British India, and on colonial violence and warfare in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. His publications include Thuggee: Banditry and the British in Early Nineteenth-Century India (Palgrave, 2007); Stranglers and Bandits: A Historical Anthology of Thuggee (OUP India, 2009); The Great Fear of 1857: Rumours, Conspiracies and the Making of the Indian Uprising (Peter Lang, 2010); The Skull of Alum Bheg: The Life and Death of a Rebel of 1857 (Hurst/OUP/Penguin, 2017); and Amritsar 1919: An Empire of Fear and the Making of a Massacre (Yale, 2019).

Table of Contents

IntroductionNote on the TextSelect BibliographyA Chronology of Philip Meadows TaylorTHE CONFESSIONS OF A THUGAppendixGlossaryExplanatory Notes