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The Corbett Papers: Biographical, Legal, & Contextual Material on the Life & Career of Jim Corbett of Kumaon

Akshay Shah

Stephen Alter

Jim Corbett, the famous naturalist-hunter, wrote a series of bestsellers about his experiences with wildlife in the jungles of North India. Man-Eaters of Kumaon (1944), his first book, has sold more than 4 million copies. Few people know that some of the stories in that book were earlier published in a slender volume titled Jungle Stories, only a hundred copies of which were printed by Corbett for friends in his hometown, Nainital. The entire text of this privately published and long vanished book is reproduced here, along with papers that Corbett's first biographer, D.C. Kala, acquired during his research.

The Corbett Papers also includes the unpublished reminiscences of Jim by his sister Maggie, and rare extracts from a forgotten work, The Taming of the Jungle, by Corbett's half-brother Charles Doyle.

D.C. Kala's writings from the mid-1950s describing what is now the Corbett Park appear here too, as do extracts from Memoirs of the Raj by G.R. Kala, a government official and contemporary of Corbett posted in the Kumaon regions where the hunter was most active.

Finally, the full text of Jim Corbett's lengthy Last Will and Testament is reproduced, affording new insights into his character and state of mind at the end of his life.

All readers of Corbett's compelling corpus will require this book to complete their collection of his inimitable writings.

  • Classification : Biography & Memoir
  • Pub Date : OCT 7, 2022
  • Imprint : Black Kite
  • Page Extent : 264
  • Binding : HB
  • ISBN : 9789393701398
  • Price : INR 699
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Akshay Shah

Akshay Shah is an outdoor educator, a wilderness medicine instructor and a naturalist based in Ranikhet, Uttarakhand. He is currently the Director of Hanifl Centre for Outdoor Education and Environmental Study, Woodstock School, Mussoorie, Uttarakhand.

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Stephen Alter

Stephen Alter is the author of more than twenty books, many of which focus on the natural history of the Himalaya. He lives in Mussoorie, Uttarakhand, and has written a novel about Jim Corbett, In the Jungles of the Night.

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