Naturalist, hunter, conservationist, author — the many contours of Jim Corbett’s life have been illuminated both by his own writings and of others who wrote about him.
Corbett wrote a series of bestselling books on the jungles of North India and on his time spent there. Man-Eaters of Kumaon (1944), The Man-Eating Leopard of Rudraprayag (1948), The Temple Tiger and More Man-Eaters of Kumaon (1955), and other gripping accounts captured his hunting expeditions and the forest in all its sights and sounds.
Corbett’s story has been told by many others as well — a list that now has a welcome addition, The Corbett Papers: Biographical, Legal, & Contextual Material on the Life & Career of Jim Corbett of Kumaon. Compiled and edited by Akshay Shah, a naturalist and outdoors educator, and author Stephen Alter, whose In The Jungles of the Night (2016) is a reimagining of Corbett’s life, the collection pieces together the life and the times of Corbett through unpublished recollections and other extracts that show him both as a product of the colonial era and as someone who was sensitive to its failings.
The first chapter of Jungle Stories, a slim volume that Corbett published just a hundred copies for friends in Nainital, is reproduced here. In fact, many of the tales of Jungle Stories went on to find space in Man-Eaters of Kumaon.
Also reprinted in the book is the first chapter of what is probably Corbett’s “first-length biography” written by Durga Charan Kala, published in 1979, and republished in 2009. The text is lit by Kala’s wry humour and, as Alter writes, he “does not shy away from portraying his subject as a product and proponent of British rule”.
Equally delightful is Akshay Shah’s reminiscences of Kala himself — journalist, naturalist, minimalist, “an old monk drinking an Old Monk” — whose research papers he inherited, some of which are produced here.
Among the papers that Kala collected on Corbett are the reminiscences of Maggie, Corbett’s sister and life-long companion, as narrated to her friend after Corbett’s death in Kenya in 1955.
It also appears that Jim Corbett was not the only writer in the family. His half-brother Charles Doyle also nurtured literary ambitions. Extracts from Doyle’s The Taming of the Jungle show that the book may be set in Corbett territory but the melodramatic flourish couldn’t be farther than Corbett’s understated style and rooted narrative.
A lot has been written on Corbett, but as Alter says, “This collection is an effort to provide those who might be interested with a few primary documents that shed light on the writer as well as the hunter, but mostly on a compassionate and unique human being.”
Title | The Corbett Papers
Compiled and edited by Akshay Shah, Stephen Alter
Publisher: Black Kite
Pages: 251
Price: Rs 699
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