Harry Hobbs of Kolkata and Other Forgotten Lives is a fascinating collection of nine carefully curated chronicles related to the city in the 19th century. They are rare to find. Some of them were discovered inside dusty files in government archives, many were retrieved from the pages of old newspapers, and others were prised out of private family memoirs. They tell us relatively unknown narratives about Kolkata and the fascinating accounts surrounding them.

The protagonists are middle to junior civil or military officials and puisne judges, along with an opera impresario, an entertainer, a piano tuner, a mercenary, a hotelier, a writer, a publisher, a lawyer, and a real-life police detective-cum-crime writer.

Through this book, we step back in time to look at this period of change and upheaval, when Kolkata’s syncretic identity was moulded in part by these European and American settlers when the things we take for granted today were yet to be invented or experienced. And yet, they made astonishing contributions. These are those forgotten stories.

About the Author: Devasis Chattopadhyay is an author and a columnist by passion. By profession, he is a Corporate Reputation Adviser and a Brand Strategist. He is a bilingual writer and writes both in Bengali and English. He began writing non-fiction features in the mid-1980s and continues writing them in various newspapers, web portals, and magazines. He writes on facets of urban history and culture, and Public Relations and Communications.

In 2017, Devasis published his maiden novel Without Prejudice (Niyogi Books) in English. The novel was translated into Malayalam (Nisha Narthaki) in 2022. Harry Hobbs of Kolkata and Other Forgotten Lives is his second book and first non-fiction monograph.