S. M. (Stephen Meredyth) Edwardes

Born in 1873, Stephen Meredyth Edwardes was a British civil servant in the Indian Civil Service who spent much of his career in the Bombay Presidency. He is remembered both for his administrative work and for writing about India, especially Bombay, with a focus on its people, customs, and past.

Edwardes wrote books including By-Ways of Bombay and was also associated with historical and scholarly writing on Indian subjects. His nonfiction often reflects the outlook of the colonial period, but it remains useful as a detailed record of Bombay as he saw it in the early 1900s.

He died in 1927. Today, his books are mainly of interest to readers and listeners curious about Mumbai’s earlier history, British India, and the way cities were described by observant writers of that era.