"India's Prisoner"
A Biography of Edward John Thompson, 1886-1946

This biography of Edward Thompson - novelist, journalist, historian of India and friend of Nehru and Gandhi - tells the story of this liberal advocate for Indian culture. His first visits to India as a Methodist missionary are recorded, as are his years spent teaching in Oxford.

Edward John Thompson -- novelist, journalist, and historian of India -- was a liberal advocate for Indian culture and political self-determination at a time when Indian affairs were of little general interest in England. As a friend of Nehru, Gandhi, and other Congress Party leaders, Thompson had contacts that many English officials did not have and did not know how to get. Thus, he was an excellent channel for interpreting India to England and England to India. Thompson first went to India in 1919 as a Methodist missionary to teach English literature at Bankura Wesleyan College. It was there that he cultivated the literary circle of Rabindranath Tagore, as yet unknown in England, and there he learned the political complications and deficiencies of India's educational system. The major conflict he faced was the lingering influence of Victorian Wesleyanism. In 1923, Thompson resigned and returned to teach at Oxford. Interest in South Asia studies was minimal at Oxford, and Thompson turned increasingly to writing Indian history. That work, and his unique account of his experiences in the Mesopotamian campaign in World War I, supply a viewpoint found nowhere else, as well as personal views of literary figures such as Robert Graves and Robert Bridges. Thompson was also a major influence on the work of his son, E. P. Thompson, a modern historian of eighteenth-century England. Covering politically significant events between Thompson's arrival in India and up to his death, this important biography casts considerable light on Thompson and how he struggled with his religion, his family, and his relationship with India. The first biography of E. J. Thompson, "India's Prisoner" will havewidespread appeal, especially to those interested in South Asian and English history, literature, and cultural history.