Confessions of a Thug (novel) (original) (raw)

Confessions of a Thug is an English novel written by Philip Meadows Taylor in 1839 based on the Thuggee cult in India. It was a best-seller in 19th-century Britain, becoming the British Empire's most sensational ethnographic fiction in the first half of the 19th century; its avid readers included Queen Victoria. It was one of the best-selling crime novels of the 19th century, and was the most influential novel about India prior to Rudyard Kipling's Kim (1901). The novel's popularity established the word "thug" in the English language.