This book weaves William Thomas Thornton’slife story into the larger themes of his diverse writings whose purpose was toexpose ambiguities and contradictions in politics, economics, metaphysics andreligion. Thornton was a poet, an intrepid traveler, abiographer, an essayist, an imperial mandarin, and a dutiful family man. Thorntonjoined the East India Company in the mid-1830s, rising to become Secretary ofthe India Office’s Department of Public Works. Thisstudy uses Thornton’s letters and other recently-discovered primary material toprovide a fascinating account that returns his compelling life to the center ofnineteenth-century British intellectual thought.