With Clive in India: The Beginning of an Empire

The period between the landing of Clive as a young writer in India and the close of his career was critical and eventful in the extreme. At the commencement the English were traders existing on sufferance of the native princes. At its close they were masters of Bengal and of the greater part of southern India. The author has given a full and accurate account of the events of that stirring time, and battles and sieges follow each other in rapid succession, while he combines with his narrative a tale of daring and adventure, which gives a lifelike interest to the volume.

Starting in the 1750's, Clive was sent to pull out Britain's bacon in India, he was to avenge the so-called Black Hole of Calcutta, and his reworking of India was very British indeed until the modern uprisings of Gandhi and Nehru. The boys who read Henty never knew that Gandhi was on the horizon.

Written for young people, it is subtitled "Beginnings of an Empire", and gives a vivid picture of the events of the ten years which at their commencement saw English influence at the point of extinction in India, and which ended in the final triumph of the English both in Bengal and Madras.

Among the 80 books for boys written by Henty, who enjoyed great popularity through his death in 1902, his With Clive in India is one of the two or three most likely of mention.