Jim Corbett Popular Books

Jim Corbett Biography & Facts

Edward James Corbett (25 July 1875 – 19 April 1955) was an Indian-born British hunter, tracker, naturalist and author. He was frequently called upon by the Government of the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh to kill man-eating tigers and leopards that were attacking people in the nearby villages of the Kumaon and Garhwal Divisions. He recounted his hunts and experiences in books like Man-Eaters of Kumaon, which enjoyed critical acclaim and commercial success. He was also an avid photographer and spoke out for the need to protect India's wildlife from extermination. Early life Edward James Corbett was born on 25 July 1875 of British ancestry in the town of Nainital during British Raj. He grew up in a large family of sixteen children and was the eighth child of Christopher William Corbett and his wife Mary Jane née Prussia who had previously married Dr. Charles James Doyle of Agra, who died at Etawah in 1857. Jim Corbett's parents had moved to Nainital in 1862 after his father had quit military service and been appointed the town's postmaster. In winters, the family used to move to the foothills, where they owned a cottage named "Arundel" in the village now known as Kaladhungi. Corbett's mother was very influential in Nainital's social life among Europeans, and she became a kind of real estate agent for European settlers. His father retired from the position of postmaster in 1878 and died a few weeks after a heart attack on 21 April 1881. Jim was then aged six and his eldest brother Tom took over as postmaster of Nainital. From a very early age, Jim was fascinated by the forests and the wildlife around his home in Kaladhungi. Through frequent excursions, he learned to identify most animals and birds by their calls. Over time, he became a good tracker and hunter. He studied at Oak Openings School, which merged with Philander Smith College, in Nainital, later known as the Halett War School, and now known as Birla Vidya Mandir, Nainital. Before he was nineteen, he quit school and found employment with the Bengal and North Western Railway, initially working as a fuel inspector at Manakpur in Punjab, and subsequently as a contractor for the trans-shipment of goods across the Ganga at Mokama Ghat in Bihar. Corbett started a school for railway staff at Mokama Ghat. Hunting tigers and leopards During his life, Corbett tracked and shot several leopards and tigers; about a dozen were well documented man-eaters. Corbett provided estimates of human casualties in his books, including Man-Eaters of Kumaon, The Man-Eating Leopard of Rudraprayag, and The Temple Tiger and More Man-Eaters of Kumaon. Calculating the totals from these accounts, these big cats had killed more than 1,200 men, women, and children, according to Corbett. There are some discrepancies in the official human death tolls that the British and Indian governments have on record and Corbett's estimates. The first designated man-eating tiger he killed, the Champawat Tiger, was responsible for an estimated 436 documented deaths. Though most of his kills were tigers, Corbett successfully killed at least two man-eating leopards. The first was the Panar Leopard in 1910, which allegedly killed 400 people. The second was the man-eating Leopard of Rudraprayag in 1926, which terrorized the pilgrims journeying to the holy Hindu shrines Kedarnath and Badrinath for more than eight years, and was said to be responsible for more than 126 deaths. Other notable man-eaters he killed were the Talla-Des man-eater, the Mohan man-eater, the Thak man-eater, the Muktesar man-eater and the Chowgarh tigress. Analysis of carcasses, skulls, and preserved remains show that most of the man-eaters were suffering from disease or wounds, such as porcupine quills embedded deep in the skin or gunshot wounds that had not healed, like that of the Muktesar Man-Eater. The Thak man-eating tigress, when skinned by Corbett, revealed two old gunshot wounds; one in her shoulder had become septic, and could have been the reason for the tigress's having turned man-eater, Corbett suggested. In the foreword of Man Eaters of Kumaon, Corbett writes: The wound that has caused a particular tiger to take to man-eating might be the result of a carelessly fired shot and failure to follow up and recover the wounded animal or be the result of the tiger having lost his temper while killing a porcupine Corbett preferred to hunt alone and on foot when pursuing dangerous game. He often hunted with Robin, a small dog he wrote about in Man-Eaters of Kumaon. Hunter and naturalist Corbett bought his first camera in the late 1920s and—inspired by his friend Frederick Walter Champion—started to record tigers on cine film. Although he had an intimate knowledge of the jungle, it was a demanding task to obtain good pictures, as the animals were exceedingly shy. A popular misconception is that Corbett never killed a tiger without confirmation of its killing people. For example, Corbett killed the unusually large and most widely sought after Bachelor of Powalgarh, even though this tiger had never killed a human. Together with Champion, he played a key role in establishing India's first national park in the Kumaon Hills, the Hailey National Park, initially named after Lord Hailey. The park was renamed in Corbett's honour in 1957. While dedicating his book My India to "...my friends, the poor of India", he writes "It is of these people, who are admittedly poor, and who are often described as 'India's starving millions', among whom I have lived and whom I love, that I shall endeavour to tell in the pages of this book, which I humbly dedicate to my friends, the poor of India." Profits from the publication of "Man-Eaters of Kumaon" were donated to St. Dunstan's, a training school for blinded veterans. Jim Corbett resided in the Gurney House, Nainital along with his sister Maggie Corbett, where their mother moved in 1881 after the death of their father. They sold the house to Mrs. Kalavati Varma, before leaving for Kenya in November 1947. The house is now a private residence, which has been transformed into a museum and is known as the Jim Corbett Museum. Jim also spent a short time in Chotti Haldwani, a village he had adopted and which came to be known as Corbett's Village. Corbett and the villagers built a wall around the village in 1925 to keep wild animals out of the premises. As of 2018 the wall still stands, and according to villagers has prevented wild animal attacks on villagers since it was built. Retirement in Kenya After 1947, Corbett and his sister Maggie retired to Nyeri, Kenya, where he lived in the cottage 'Paxtu' in the grounds of the Hotel Outspan, which had originally been built for his friend Lord Baden-Powell. He continued to write and sound the alarm about the declining numbers of wild cats and other wildlife. Corbett was at the Treetops, a hut built on the branches of a giant ficus tree, as the bodyguard of Princess Elizabeth when she stayed there on .... Discover the Jim Corbett popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Jim Corbett books.