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Few names hold as special a place in Rigby’s history as Jim Corbett. More than a century after his association with the company began, his life and legacy continue to fascinate readers, hunters, conservationists and admirers around the world.
In Undiscovered Corbett, author Ian Douglas offers a richly researched portrait of the man behind the familiar stories. Rigby Managing Director Marc Newton, who also contributed the book’s foreword, shares his thoughts on this important new work.
The histories of Jim Corbett and John Rigby & Co. are, as I wrote in the foreword to this book, curiously intertwined. So, when Ian Douglas approached me about contributing to Undiscovered Corbett, I did not need persuading. What I did not fully anticipate was quite how significant a work he would produce.
Jim Corbett needs little introduction to anyone with a passing interest in the natural world, wildlife conservation, or the sporting traditions of British India. In the 1920s and 30s, he tracked and shot the man-eating tigers and leopards of Kumaon and Garhwal that had killed hundreds of villagers – feats of extraordinary courage that he later committed to prose with such clarity and modesty that his books remain compulsive reading today. Yet for all that has been written about him, Douglas has managed something remarkable: he has found new ground.
The book is built on decades of research, drawing on previously unpublished photographs, private letters, shooting journals and official reports that shed fresh light on a life already well-documented, or so we thought. The chapter on Corbett’s gun cabinet alone is worth the cover price for anyone with an interest in sporting firearms. Douglas traces the provenance of each weapon Jim owned or borrowed with forensic care, including the celebrated Rigby .275 Mauser – serial number 2516 – presented to Jim following the killing of the Champawat tigress in 1907. Seeing the original Rigby sale records and dispatch notes reproduced here, and tracing that rifle’s journey from our workshop to Jim’s hands and through his most famous adventures, is a genuinely moving experience.
Douglas is equally meticulous on Jim’s fishing. The mahseer chapters are a revelation, drawing on correspondence and journals that reveal a dimension of Corbett’s character his own books only hint at. Here was a man who found in the rivers of northern India the same quality of absorption and peace that others seek in prayer. The scholarship is careful and the passion evident.
There are chapters on Jim’s years at Mokameh Ghat, his service in the First World War and Waziristan, his time in East Africa, and detailed accounts of each man-eater hunt, many enriched with material Jim himself never published. Douglas is not merely rehashing familiar territory. He is filling in the gaps with material that Jim left out, deliberately or otherwise, and placing each episode in its proper historical and geographical context.
The book is extensively illustrated throughout. Ninety previously unseen photographs, many drawn from private family collections, give the text a vividness and intimacy that no amount of prose could replicate on its own.
I said in my foreword that this may very well be the last word on Jim Corbett. Having now read it in full, I stand by that. Ian Douglas has spent a lifetime preparing to write this book, and it shows on every page. For anyone who has felt even a flicker of affection for Jim Corbett and his world, Undiscovered Corbett is an essential and deeply satisfying work.
Undiscovered Corbett by Ian Douglas is published by Merlin Unwin Books and available to purchase from the Rigby Shikar store, priced £20.
In Undiscovered Corbett, author Ian Douglas offers a richly researched portrait of the man behind the familiar stories. Rigby Managing Director Marc Newton, who also contributed the book’s foreword, shares his thoughts on this important new work.
The histories of Jim Corbett and John Rigby & Co. are, as I wrote in the foreword to this book, curiously intertwined. So, when Ian Douglas approached me about contributing to Undiscovered Corbett, I did not need persuading. What I did not fully anticipate was quite how significant a work he would produce.
Jim Corbett needs little introduction to anyone with a passing interest in the natural world, wildlife conservation, or the sporting traditions of British India. In the 1920s and 30s, he tracked and shot the man-eating tigers and leopards of Kumaon and Garhwal that had killed hundreds of villagers – feats of extraordinary courage that he later committed to prose with such clarity and modesty that his books remain compulsive reading today. Yet for all that has been written about him, Douglas has managed something remarkable: he has found new ground.
The book is built on decades of research, drawing on previously unpublished photographs, private letters, shooting journals and official reports that shed fresh light on a life already well-documented, or so we thought. The chapter on Corbett’s gun cabinet alone is worth the cover price for anyone with an interest in sporting firearms. Douglas traces the provenance of each weapon Jim owned or borrowed with forensic care, including the celebrated Rigby .275 Mauser – serial number 2516 – presented to Jim following the killing of the Champawat tigress in 1907. Seeing the original Rigby sale records and dispatch notes reproduced here, and tracing that rifle’s journey from our workshop to Jim’s hands and through his most famous adventures, is a genuinely moving experience.
Douglas is equally meticulous on Jim’s fishing. The mahseer chapters are a revelation, drawing on correspondence and journals that reveal a dimension of Corbett’s character his own books only hint at. Here was a man who found in the rivers of northern India the same quality of absorption and peace that others seek in prayer. The scholarship is careful and the passion evident.
There are chapters on Jim’s years at Mokameh Ghat, his service in the First World War and Waziristan, his time in East Africa, and detailed accounts of each man-eater hunt, many enriched with material Jim himself never published. Douglas is not merely rehashing familiar territory. He is filling in the gaps with material that Jim left out, deliberately or otherwise, and placing each episode in its proper historical and geographical context.
The book is extensively illustrated throughout. Ninety previously unseen photographs, many drawn from private family collections, give the text a vividness and intimacy that no amount of prose could replicate on its own.
I said in my foreword that this may very well be the last word on Jim Corbett. Having now read it in full, I stand by that. Ian Douglas has spent a lifetime preparing to write this book, and it shows on every page. For anyone who has felt even a flicker of affection for Jim Corbett and his world, Undiscovered Corbett is an essential and deeply satisfying work.
Undiscovered Corbett by Ian Douglas is published by Merlin Unwin Books and available to purchase from the Rigby Shikar store, priced £20.
