author
James Kennedy
1815–1899
A Scottish missionary and writer, he spent decades in northern India and turned those years into vivid books about religion, society, and daily life under British rule. His work offers a firsthand look at Benares and Kumaon in the nineteenth century.
1 Audiobook
Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877
by James Kennedy
About the author
Born in 1815, James Kennedy was a Scottish missionary of the London Missionary Society who worked for many years in India. He is known for writing about his experiences there, especially in Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877, a detailed memoir of missionary life and the people and places he encountered.
Kennedy also wrote Christianity and the Religions of India, reflecting his long engagement with Indian religious traditions and the debates of his time. His books combine travel, observation, and religious argument, and they remain useful as firsthand records of nineteenth-century Benares and the Kumaon region.
He died in 1899. Although clear biographical information about his personal life is limited in the sources I found, his published work shows a writer deeply shaped by years of residence in India and by the missionary world of the Victorian era.