Harry Hobbs of Kolkata and Other Forgotten Lives is a fascinating collection of nine carefully curated chronicles related to the city in the 19th century. They are rare to find. Some of them were discovered inside dusty files in government archives, many were retrieved from the pages of old newspapers, and others were prised out of private family memoirs. They tell us relatively unknown narratives about Kolkata and the fascinating accounts surrounding them.\n\nThe protagonists are middle to junior civil or military officials and puisne judges, along with an opera impresario, an entertainer, a piano tuner, a mercenary, a hotelier, a writer, a publisher, a lawyer, and a real-life police detective-cumcrime writer. A few of them merely passed through the city, and many never left. However, most of them are unremembered, unsung. Through this book, we step back in time to look at this period of change and upheaval, when Kolkata’s syncretic identity was moulded in part by these European and American settlers when the things we take for granted today were yet to be invented or experienced. And yet, they made astonishing contributions. These are those forgotten stories