The Tiger of Mysore: A Story of the War with Tippoo Saib

Description

The Tiger of Mysore is a great adventure story by G. A. Henty, one of the most prolific and most successful American novelists of the first decades of the 20th century.

Set in 1795, the story starts when the protagonist Dick Holland’s father, a ship captain gets shipwrecked close to India and is taken hostage by Tippoo, the local tyrant. He is reported to be dead, but his family suspects that he is still alive and probably held captive, so Dick and his mother decide to go to India to find and rescue the captain. They find Tippoo and due to a heroic act – Dick saves the tyrant’s harem by killing a tiger that attacks the women – he is made an officer in Tippoo’s service. He escapes Tippoo and rescues an English girl from the tyrant’s harem, too, then he decides to go to the fort where he believes his father is held prisoner. He participates in lots of more adventures and in the end he return home a changed man, seasoned in fights and hardships.

The Tiger of Mysore was first published in 1896, when Henty was already an established author, with lots of books published. The story combines Henty’s own experiences as a captain of the British Army and the storytelling routine and inventiveness he acquired and developed while telling tales to his children.

This book also blends historic events and fiction – Tippoo was indeed the tyrant of Mysore and the war featured in the book is the Fourth Anglo-Mysore War, fought between the East India Company and its allies on one side and the Kingdom of Mysore on the other. Though the novel is not a proper historic novel, it does include a lot of battle descriptions – blended with romance, these accounts make an excellent read to anyone.
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