Philip Meadows Taylor's Confessions of a Thug (1839) is the most influential novel about India prior to Kipling's Kim and was one of the bestselling sensation novels of the nineteenth century. In the course of a confession to a white `sahib' the imprisoned Ameer Ali recounts his life as a member of the Thuggee, a secret religious cult practising ritual mass murder and robbery. Taylor uncovered evidence of the crimes committed by bands of Thugs as a Superintendent of Police in India during the 1820s. Introducing a new standard of ethnographic realism to western fiction about India, Confessions of a Thug is a strikingly vivid, chilling and immensely readable thriller. This unique critical edition makes available a fascinating and significant work of Empire writing. This book is intended for undergraduate and postgraduate study of colonial literature and empire writing; Cultural Studies.