Sir Joseph Fayrer was a surgeon who spent much of his career working in India where he became an expert on the pathology of diseases particular to the country. He accompanied Albert Edward, Prince of Wales (later King Edward VII) on his 1875 tour of the India and became a friend of the prince.

This book, published in 1875 and presented to the Royal Library, concerns the natural history of the Bengal tiger. Bengal tigers were regularly hunted for sport, a practice that dated to India's ancient past and was intensified by Europeans in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Much of this book describes, often in graphic detail, the hunting expeditions in search of the animal. The consequences of excessive hunting, poaching and ongoing habitat loss has resulted in Bengal tigers being declared an endangered species.