Description du livre
This book weaves William Thomas Thornton’s
life story into the larger themes of his diverse writings whose purpose was to
expose ambiguities and contradictions in politics, economics, metaphysics and
religion. Thornton was a poet, an intrepid traveler, a
biographer, an essayist, an imperial mandarin, and a dutiful family man. Thornton
joined the East India Company in the mid-1830s, rising to become Secretary of
the India Office’s Department of Public Works. This
study uses Thornton’s letters and other recently-discovered primary material to
provide a fascinating account that returns his compelling life to the center of
nineteenth-century British intellectual thought.