Who wrote the novel "Confessions of a Thug"?

"Confessions of a Thug" is an English novel written by Philip Meadows Taylor in 1839 based on the Thuggee (gangs of professional robbers and murderers) cult in India. It was a best-seller in 19th-century Britain, becoming the British Empire's most sensational ethnographic fiction in the first half of the 19th century; its avid readers included Queen Victoria. The novel's popularity established the word "thug" in the English language.

Colonel Philip Meadows Taylor (25 September 1808 - 13 May, 1876) was an administrator in British India. "Confessions of a Thug" is a tale of crime and retribution. Thugs were secret criminal group, partly hereditary in membership, who specialized in the murder by strangulation of travelers as a prelude to theft. In 1835, Colonel Sleeman (17888 -1856) best known for his work suppressing the Thugee society, captured "Feringhea" (one of the inspirations for the character Sayeed Ameeqr Ali in "Confessions of a Thug" is based) and got him to turn King's evidence. During Sleeman's operations, more than 1400 Thugs were hanged or transported for life.

In the words of Philip Meadows "The tale of crime which forms the subject of the novel is, alas, almost all true. What there is of fiction has been supplied only to connect the events, and make the adventures of Ameer Ali as the nature of his horrible profession would permit me". He was one of the approvers or informers of Colonel Sleeman. He had been directly concerned in the murder of 719 persons."