Travels of Dean Mahomet: An Eighteenth-Century Journey Through India

Vividly recounting his travels as a camp follower and then as a subaltern officer in the British East India Company's army, Dean Mahomet - an early Indian emigrant to Britain - presents us with the first book ever written by an Indian in English. He began this memoir, which was originally published in 1794, with his wrenching departure from his childhood home among the Indian Muslim elite. He concluded with his voyage to Ireland in 1784. His auto-ethnographic account of his family's domestic and religious customs, and of this crucial period in the violent establishment of British colonialism, stands as an important counterexample to any view of eighteenth-century English literature as the sole preserve of Europeans. Placing the Travels in context, Michael Fisher's introduction and biographical essay trace the author's life in India and Britain.