Born in 1808, in Liverpool, England, Colonel Philip Meadows Taylor came to India in 1823 to work as an assistant for Mr. Baxter, a merchant in Bombay. But with Baxter being bankrupt, the sixteen-year-old Taylor found a commission in the Nizam of Hyderabad’s army. During his service, Taylor learned about India and became proficient in various languages. He wrote several books depicting and describing the Indian history, society, landscape, and characters. Confessions of a Thug, published while he was in England in 1840, was Taylor’s first Indian novel. The book was an immediate success. The most significant novel about India before Kipling’s Kim (1901), it popularised the word ‘thug’ in the English language. Taylor followed it with Tipoo Sultaun (1840), which was also equally successful. His other works include Ralph Darnell (1865), Seeta (1872), and A Noble Queen, which was published posthumously in 1878.