James Talboys Wheeler

James Talboys Wheeler (Oxford, December 1824 – Ramsgate, 13 January 1897) was a bureaucrat-historian of the British Raj.

Early life and career James Talboys Wheeler was born in Oxford 22 December 1824. His parents were James Luft Wheeler; a bookseller, and Anne Ophelia; whose father was the publisher and translator David Alphonso Talboys and himself the son of a bookseller. James was privately educated and then attempted an unsuccessful career as a publisher and bookseller before venturing into authorship of student handbooks. and during his four years in that position his interest in Hindu customs was piqued as a consequence of his contact with Indian students. He believed that the Europeans in India were largely ignorant of the Hindu perspective on family life. In 1860, while still holding his chair at the college, he was employed by the Raj government in Madras, from which came his Madras in the Olden Time, a history based on government records that was published in 1861, In the following year he moved to Calcutta as an Assistant Secretary in the Foreign Department, He also engaged himself, in his leisure time, with the compilation of his four-volume History of India, which was published between 1867 and 1881.

In 1870 he moved to Rangoon in Burma, where he held office as Secretary to the Chief Commissioner of British Burma.

Death In contradiction to Mittal, the ODNB says that Wheeler retired in 1891. He died in Ramsgate on 13 January 1897. He had married Emily Roe on 15 January 1852, in Cambridge, and the couple had several children.