Edward Hamilton Aitken

Edward Hamilton Aitken was a British civil servant in India who became much better known for his nature writing than for his official work. Born in Satara on August 16, 1851, he wrote under the pen name Eha and developed a reputation for lively, humorous essays about animals, insects, and ordinary life in colonial India.

He was also a founding member of the Bombay Natural History Society, which places him close to the early growth of organized natural history in India. Readers often remember him for books such as The Tribes on My Frontier, Behind the Bungalow, and The Naturalist on the Prowl, where careful observation is matched by a light, conversational style.

Aitken died in Edinburgh on April 11, 1909. What makes him memorable now is the way he wrote about the natural world: curious, amused, and deeply attentive to the creatures around him.