George Robert Aberigh-Mackay

George Robert Aberigh-Mackay was a British educator and writer who worked in colonial India. He taught English literature at Delhi College, tutored the Raja of Ratlam, and became principal of Rajkumar College in Indore. He contributed to newspapers, signing his work as the Political Orphan. Twenty-one Days in India began as sketches in Vanity Fair during 1878 and 1879 before appearing in book form. Its portraits examine Anglo-Indian officials and social types, including the commander-in-chief, the civil surgeon, the political agent, and the travelling member of Parliament. The work is satire rather than a literal twenty-one-day itinerary, using the tour of Sir Ali Baba to expose administrative vanity and colonial habits. Aberigh-Mackay died in 1881 at thirty-two, leaving Twenty-one Days in India as the best-known example of his observational prose.