The Jungle Fugitives (1903)

Novella-about an American family caught in India during the Indian Rebellion of 1857-and several short stories-fiction and non-fiction. The Indian Rebellion of 1857 was a major, but ultimately unsuccessful, uprising in India in 1857-58 against the rule of the British East India Company, which functioned as a sovereign power on behalf of the British Crown. The rebellion began on 10 May 1857 in the form of a mutiny of sepoys of the Company's army in the garrison town of Meerut, 40 miles northeast of Delhi (now Old Delhi). It then erupted into other mutinies and civilian rebellions chiefly in the upper Gangetic plain and central India, though incidents of revolt also occurred farther north and east. The rebellion posed a considerable threat to British power in that region, and was contained only with the rebels' defeat in Gwalior on 20 June 1858. On 1 November 1858, the British granted amnesty to all rebels not involved in murder, though they did not declare the hostilities formally to have ended until 8 July 1859. The rebellion is known by many names, including the Sepoy Mutiny, the Indian Mutiny, the Great Rebellion, the Revolt of 1857, the Indian Insurrection, and the First War of Independence................. Edward Sylvester Ellis (April 11, 1840 - June 20, 1916) was an American author who was born in Ohio and died at Cliff Island, Maine. Ellis was a teacher, school administrator, journalist, and the author of hundreds of books and magazine articles that he produced by his name and by a number of noms de plume. Notable fiction stories by Ellis include The Steam Man of the Prairies and Seth Jones, or the Captives of the Frontier. Internationally, Edward S. Ellis is probably known best for his Deerfoot novels read widely by young boys until the 1950s. Dime novelsSeth Jones was the most significant of early dime novels of publishers Beadle and Adams. It is said that Seth Jones was one of Abraham Lincoln's favorite stories. During the mid-1880s, after a fiction-writing career of some thirty years, Ellis eventually began composing more serious works of biography, history, and persuasive writing. Of note was "The Life of Colonel David Crockett," which had the story of Davy Crockett giving a speech usually called "Not Yours To Give." It was a speech in opposition to awarding money to a Navy widow on the grounds that Congress had no Constitutional mandate to give charity. It was said to have been inspired by Crockett's meeting with a Horatio Bunce, a much quoted man in Libertarian circles, but one for whom historical evidence is non-existent....