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Historical person
1751–1799
Tipu Sultan ruled Mysore from 1782 until his death in 1799 and was one of the most formidable opponents of the British East India Company in India. He modernised parts of the army and administration, used rocket artillery and fought a series of wars involving British, Maratha and Hyderabad forces. He was killed defending Seringapatam during the Fourth Anglo-Mysore War.
Tipu is a major historical presence in Bernard Cornwell’s Sharpe’s Tiger, which places the fictional Richard Sharpe inside the British assault on Seringapatam. The novel uses Tipu’s court, army and fortress as central elements while reflecting the British perspective of the campaign.
In Sir Walter Scott’s Chronicles of the Canongate, Hyder Ali intervenes against the plot involving his son Tipu Sultan, but rescue does not erase the human cost. In Alex Rutherford’s Fortune’s Heir, Hyder Ali and his son Tipu Sultan, supported by France, threaten the Company’s position while internal rivalry weakens its government. Other novels featuring Tipu Sultan include Anthony Morland’s An Officer’s Justice and Anthony Morland’s The Tiger’s Last Roar.
In non-fiction, Tipu Sultan is discussed in William Dalrymple’s The Anarchy. William Dalrymple’s The Anarchy approaches the subject through political ambition and government, military command and battlefield decision-making, and empire, conquest and resistance.
Series
The Life of William Culpepper follows a fictional British officer from the Revolutionary Wars in Europe into the East India Company’s campaigns in India. The sequence begins with the Flanders campaign and the Battle of Boxtel, then moves through the Fourth Anglo-Mysore War, the unstable aftermath of Tipu…
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The Ballantyne Chronicles follow Nicholas Ballantyne from a threatened youth in 1744 Scotland into the expanding world of the British East India Company. Sent to India for his safety, he forms a decisive friendship with Robert Clive and becomes involved in the contest between British and French interests…
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The Waverley Novels are Walter Scott’s long sequence of historical romances, named after the anonymously published Waverley of 1814. The series moves across Scottish, English and continental European history, placing fictional protagonists between older systems of loyalty and the political, commercial and legal institutions replacing them. Scott’s characters…
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The Sharpe series follows Richard Sharpe from service as a private soldier in India to command in the British Army during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. The novels place him at the Siege of Seringapatam, Battle of Assaye, Siege of Gawilghur, Battle of Trafalgar, British attack on Copenhagen,…
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Non Fiction
Biographies, histories and other non-fiction are listed separately from the historical novels above.
