author

J. E. Howard

Known for writing a memoir of explorer William Watts McNair, this little-documented author appears to have had ties to British India. The surviving record is sparse, which gives the work an added sense of period curiosity.

1 Audiobook

Memoir of William Watts McNair, Late of "Connaught House," Mussooree, of the Indian Survey Department, the First European Explorer of Kafiristan

Memoir of William Watts McNair, Late of "Connaught House," Mussooree, of the Indian Survey Department, the First European Explorer of Kafiristan

by J. E. Howard

About the author

J. E. Howard is listed by Project Gutenberg as the author of Memoir of William Watts McNair, Late of "Connaught House," Mussooree, of the Indian Survey Department, the First European Explorer of Kafiristan. Beyond that book, easily confirmed biographical details are limited.

A likely match appears in Men-at-the-Bar, which includes a John Edwin Howard who practiced before the High Court of the North-Western Provinces in India, had been associated with Allahabad, studied at the Middle Temple in 1869, and was called to the bar in 1871. Because the available sources do not fully prove that this barrister and the book's author are the same person, that identification should be treated as probable rather than certain.

What can be said with confidence is that Howard's surviving known work centers on William Watts McNair, the survey officer and explorer remembered for his journey into Kafiristan. That focus places Howard among writers who helped preserve the stories of imperial exploration for later readers.