Dennis Kincaid

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Dennis Kincaid (October 16, 1905 – June 10, 1937) was a British civil servant in India and a novelist. He wrote Shivaji: The Grand Rebel, about a self-made emperor from the sixteenth century, and British social life in India, 1608-1937, a well-known look at the British in colonial India.

He was the eldest son of Charles Augustus Kincaid, a senior civil servant and writer; his grandfather was Major-General William Kincaid, Resident of Bhopal. He studied at Balliol College, Oxford (1924–1927) and then joined the Indian Civil Service. He arrived in Bombay in 1928 to work with the courts and wrote two novels about life in India, including Cactus Land (1934), which broke with the period’s usual Indian novels. He drowned on June 10, 1937 while swimming in rough seas. His unfinished book on British life in India was completed by his friend David Farrer, and some critics say his portrayal of Anglo-Indians in that book was an over-the-top caricature.