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Author: Kaye, John William

Biography:

KAYE, John William (1814-76: ODNB)

The second son of Eliza (Atkins) and Charles Kaye, solicitor to the Bank of England, he was born in London and educated at Eton and the East India Company military academy at Addiscombe. He went to India in 1832 as a cadet in the Bengal artillery and stayed for over a decade. Poems and Fragments, printed for private circulation, expresses admiration for the poetry of Wordsworth and the criticism of John Wilson, and opens with a poem on the death of Shelley (qq.v.). In 1839 Kaye married Catherine Mary Puckle (1813-93) in Calcutta; they appear to have had at least one child. Though he had to resign from the army on account of ill health in 1841, he stayed on to practise as a journalist, founding the Calcutta Review in 1844. He had already published five novels, generally anonymously or under pseudonyms, when, about 1845, he returned to England to pursue a career as a writer specializing in military history and biography. His works include lives of Sir John Malcolm, Governor of Bombay, and Sir George Tucker, General of Bengal; an account of the administration of the East India Company (1853); a History of the War in Afghanistan (1857); and a History of the Sepoy War in India, 1857-8 (3 vols., 1864-76). Until obliged by ill health to retire in 1874, he also held significant civil service positions with the East India Company (1856-8) and then as foreign secretary in the India Office. He was a Fellow of the Royal Society and a Knight Commander of the Star of India. He died at his home, Rose Hill, Forest Hill, London. (ODNB 30 Mar. 2021; WorldCat; Annual Register [1876-7] 148; findmypast.com 30 Mar. 2021)

 

Books written (1):

Jersey: [privately printed], 1835