Robert H. (Robert Henry) Elliot

Born in 1837, Robert H. Elliot is best known as the author of Gold, Sport, and Coffee Planting in Mysore, a memoir-like account of his years as a planter in Mysore. Contemporary catalog records and book listings identify him as Robert Henry Elliot (1837–1914), and his writing presents him as someone deeply shaped by long experience in India.

His work ranged beyond plantation life. Written on Their Foreheads appeared in 1879, and later he published The Clifton Park System of Farming and Laying Down Land to Grass, a practical book on agriculture that went through multiple editions. Those later books helped establish his reputation as a forceful writer on farming methods and land use.

What makes Elliot interesting today is the range of his perspective: he wrote from the worlds of colonial planting, field sports, and experimental agriculture. Readers coming to his books now will find not just historical information, but the voice of a confident, argumentative observer who wanted to persuade as much as describe.